Looks like this mage’s going melee.

  With my freshly gained weapons—one battered sword, one glorified wooden tray masquerading as a shield—I walked toward a group of the more seasoned warriors.

  The morning sun beat down on the open plains, turning the dust into glittering gold and the wind into a dry rasp that tugged at every loose bit of fabric and hair. Around us, the entire slaver band was preparing for their little XP-farming outing.

  It had the chaotic energy of a medieval LAN party.

  Wolves milled about, sniffing each other or snapping at the air. Slaves, myself included, were herded into makeshift squads, handed old gear and briefed by people who had no business giving lectures on survival. The scent of sweat, metal, and freshly stirred dirt filled my lungs. You could practically taste the nerves in the air. Or maybe that was just me.

  I didn’t get far.

  Karzi’s meaty hand shot out like a bear trap and clamped around my arm. “Na-ah, girly,” she barked, eyes narrowing like she’d been watching me the whole time. “You’re too low level. Not ready. Can’t lose you like that.”

  I blinked. She was... watching me?

  The surprise must’ve shown on my face, because she smirked and gave me a patronizing pat. “Good girl,” she praised, and I forced a smile like a dog who just got praised for not peeing on the rug.

  “I need you to gain levels fast. Can you fight? Alone?” Her tone was oddly gentle, which made it even creepier.

  “Yes, and very well, Dame Karzi,” I said with a forced spark of enthusiasm. Channel the eager slave, Charlie. It’s your best role yet.

  Apparently, my performance passed inspection. Karzi nodded, then threw her head back and let out a piercing howl that echoed across the hills. Several others nearby lifted their heads to join in, like some twisted choir of murder puppies.

  “You can go into one of the starting tunnels,” she said, pointing toward a nearby hole in the earth. A gaping wound in the cracked yellow dirt, rimmed with claw marks and spindly webbing. “Very easy targets in there. Kill everything. When you reach the first fork, go left. Then straight again. Nothing complicated.”

  “Of course,” I replied with a nod, already bracing myself for something very complicated.

  “Good girl,” she said again, and her tone dropped slightly, almost… maternal. Ew. “Don’t risk it. At all. Okay?”

  “I won’t, Dame Karzi.” I threw in a salute that was half-sincere, half-sarcastic, but mostly masked behind wide eyes and submissive posture.

  She shoved a lantern into my hand and walked away, already yelling at someone else.

  With a shrug, I turned toward the tunnel, the dry wind curling at my back, and stepped toward the dark, bug-infested unknown. Because the best days are like crawling into a giant termite nest under the watchful gaze of your howling, blood-hungry slaver.

  Yay.

  “System, why’d you stop offering me life paths?” I muttered the moment I stepped past the threshold into the tunnel. The darkness swallowed me like the mouth of something ancient and vaguely insulted I’d stepped on its tongue.

  No response.

  Figures.

  I exhaled through my nose and pulled up my character profile, half-expecting a passive-aggressive tooltip to tell me off.

  “Fine, fine. I’m level zero trash, I get it. But I clearly have more skills, right?” I tapped my foot against the packed earth floor, the sound dull and hollow. My only light was a swaying lantern held in one hand, which threw long shadows that danced like gossiping spirits on the curving termite-sculpted walls.

  And then the screen blinked.

  Rows upon rows of skills spilled out in front of me like a developer’s fever dream; hundreds of them. It hit harder than a shot of bottom-shelf whiskey on an empty stomach.

  “Oh… you actually communicate, huh?” I blinked, smirking despite myself. “Neat. So uh… don’t get mad when I exploit this, okay?”

  And then, like the punchline to a very specific joke only the universe could tell, a new entry appeared at the bottom of the list.

  I stopped walking. The air in the tunnel was dry and bitter, tinged with the scent of damp soil and insect resin. I squinted suspiciously at the floating window. “Is this a trap? It feels like a trap.”

  My voice bounced down the tunnel and came back to mock me.

  I adjusted the rusty shield on my back, currently demoted to lantern mule so I didn’t trip over my own boots, and tapped the new skill.

  Because of course I did.

  “Wait—what?!” My hand twitched. “I didn’t want to confirm it!” My heart did an impressive gymnastics routine in my chest. “Shit, what does it do?”

  A new screen blinked into existence.

  Not ominous at all.

  Then the skill vanished from the list like it had never been selectable in the first place.

  A new layout settled in.

  I froze mid-step. My lantern flickered in my hand, casting a frantic jitter over the tunnel walls. “I… I apologize for bothering you,” I whispered to the unseen force behind this.

  The weight of realization hit me like a boulder with a grudge. My fingers instinctively reached for the nearest wall, warm and textured with pulpy ridges and dry mud, sticky with some sort of secretion I didn’t want to think about. I barely noticed.

  Because my pulse was sprinting and my thoughts were slipping over themselves, trying to comprehend.

  “I… what the hell does godly skill even mean? I thought only the gods like ice-blood guy had NPC skills on godly power… Am I… Goddess of Exploits now?”

  No answer. Not even a condescending beep.

  Of course.

  After a while, I calmed down to a somewhat socially acceptable level of sanity. Enough to stop hyperventilating about being a semi-divine game-breaking bug and start focusing on the real objective: getting actual levels.

  “Goddess Charlie…” I muttered, lips twitching into a smirk as I walked deeper into the earthy darkness. “Can’t say I don’t like the sound of it. But that should be a life path, not just a skill, right?”

  Silence.

  Not even a passive-aggressive tooltip. Rude.

  “Yeah, yeah, too greedy. Got it…” I rolled my eyes and adjusted my grip on the lantern, its flickering light dancing along the ridged, clay-packed tunnel walls like a stage spotlight too tired to hold still.

  My stupid boots squished into the damp floor, the squelch reminding me I really needed my heels back. Or, you know, freedom.

  Still, I talked to myself? “From what I gathered from all the random people yapping around camp, life paths are supposed to be the most important thing. Destiny-defining, fate-bound, all that dramatic flair.”

  I opened the life path menu again. Nothing new. Same stupid three. Wife. Servitude. Defiant. And that was it. No Goddess of Tactical Bullshit, no Revenant of Spite, not even Sarcastic Bastard Princess.

  Seriously?

  “Come on,” I grumbled. “That raider this morning said he had seven hundred! Seven. Hundred. I can’t even get a fourth one that doesn’t involve a leash or a baby.”

  My voice echoed ahead of me, and something answered; it shifted in the shadows.

  The sound was faint, like soft wood cracking under strain, followed by a wet click. I raised my lantern, and then I saw it.

  A termite the size of a small pony emerged from a side crevice. Its carapace was pale ochre, smooth as a new bottle, but faintly incised with glowing spiral glyphs that pulsed with his heartbeat. Serrated mandibles clacked together, and its six legs moved with unsettling coordination, too fast and too quiet for something so big.

  Its eyes, or maybe just the glassy knobs on its head that pretended to be eyes, reflected the lantern light back at me as I grinned.

  “Finally,” I exhaled, raising my sword, pulling shield and stashing the lantern down. “Aren’t you supposed to orient by sound, you oversized holy roach?”

  It clicked again, a hollow, wet sound, like someone snapping a lobster claw underwater, and then it lunged. Fast. Way faster than something that big had any right to be.

  But predictable. It rushed me in a straight line, mandibles wide open, like it was expecting me to just stand there and scream.

  Rookie move, bug-brain.

  I raised my shield, the impact slamming into me like a freight wagon. The force jolted up my arm, rattling my shoulder, but I stayed on my feet.

  Barely.

  The termite’s weight pressed against the wood, legs scrabbling for traction, mandibles snapping inches from my face.

  “Back off,” I grunted, and shoved forward. Hard.

  As the shield bucked the thing upward, I jammed my sword down… right between the glowy eyes. The blade sank in with a sickening crunch, followed by a twitch, then stillness.

  Dead.

  I blinked at it, still holding my pose. Then slowly straightened, panting a bit.

  “Okay… she wasn’t kidding. This is easy.” I nudged the creature with my boot. No movement. Definitely dead. No shiny loot sparkles either. “No loot, huh? Of course not.”

  I crouched and tapped the side of the bug’s chitin with my knuckles. Nothing. No UI, no menu, no ‘Press HERE to Loot.’ Just wet carapace and the faint smell of something between old tree sap and burnt toast.

  “Damn. This is just like that patch. When was it? Deesn’t matter. When players got too close to NPC status and they removed manual looting? Maybe it was the seed getting fed up with players?”

  I stood and wiped bug juice off my sword with a nearby clump of grass growing from a crack in the wall. I rolled my shoulders, slid the shield back into place, and stepped over the twitchless corpse. My boots made a soft squelch as I passed, echoing faintly in the tunnel.

  “One down. A thousand creepy crawlies to go.”

  At the fork, things finally got interesting. Four of them.

  I couldn’t help but smirk; finally, a challenge. After mowing through mindless bug-things like a discount exterminator, I was ready for something with teeth.

  Or, you know, pincers.

  I broke into a run, boots slapping against the dirt-packed tunnel floor, lantern swinging wildly in one hand. The flickering flame barely lit the space, but my sword caught just enough of it to shimmer, especially now that I was weaving mana around the blade, threads of cold lacing down the metal like frost forming on a windowpane.

  “I love ice and frost!” I announced cheerily. They didn’t respond. Shocking.

  They charged straight at me. No tactics, no hesitation, just full tilt bug-berserking. Well, not entirely stupid. Two angled their approach to try a pincer movement. Not bad for oversized wood lice.

  The moment we were about to meet in glorious, muddy violence… I jumped. Just sprang upward like I was cosplaying wire-fu. My momentum carried me over the first two as they barreled under me and slammed face-first into the tunnel wall with a crunch that sang to my soul.

  Mid-air, I twisted my wrist and yanked at the surrounding mana, forming an icicle. I flung it toward the center one with all the drama of a magician revealing the final act—

  —and it exploded beneath me.

  The ground jerked up as I landed in a puff of chilled dirt. I blinked down at the impact crater, frowned. “Uhm… okay, premature detonation. Cool, cool. Real professional, Charlie.”

  The center termite, clearly offended by my commentary, resumed its charge with all the grace of a Roomba having an existential crisis. “Jerry would be so mad if I called you an AI,” I muttered as I brought my shield up.

  WHAM.

  It slammed into the wood, and I stumbled back a step, but held. My retaliation was swift, a lunge and a downward stab straight through its face. It let out a screech that faded into a wet gurgling.

  But then—

  PAIN.

  A bolt of fire raced down my spine as something slammed into me from behind, sending me sprawling. I hit the dirt hard, mouth full of grit, limbs flailing.

  I rolled instinctively, and just in time. The ground where I’d been crouched exploded into splinters and dust as something heavy and very pissed smashed into it.

  A new silhouette towered above me, haloed by the jittering lantern light.

  Bigger. Broader. Armor-like plates ridging its back. Serrated mandibles twitching with anticipation.

  A warrior.

  And I was at its feet, on my back, staring up at its mandibles.

  “Oh. Crap.”