“Hey, what’s wrong?” I asked Aelene.

“My p-parents...” she said through her sobbing. “They d-don’t want anything to do with me after... a-after everything that happened.”

“What? Why?”

“They never wanted me to become a... a priestess... a-and they were loyal to the king... they make me responsible for him being in prison...”

Loyal to the king... Fighters?

“And I can’t go back to the temple either!” she said, gesturing towards its door. “The others treated me like a fricking goddess! And I let them! What are they going to think about me now!?”

Had I known beforehand just how much she hadn’t even wanted this job, I would have ensured that Lilana makes it clear during her speech to the priests that Aelene wasn’t to blame. She had actually kind of done the opposite though, and openly called her an imposter... She had condemned her, in the name of the gods. We hadn’t done a poll, but Aelene was probably right, there would certainly be some who would have a problem with her, just like Lilana had been severely unhappy when I initially offered to let her and Oryn come back.

“I’m sorry, Aelene...”

“I don’t blame you...” she said, sniffling. “I should’ve never accepted this job! It was stupid idea from the start! One beast attack! One broken water source! Anything I can’t fix could’ve given me away! The High Priest even made agents transport a newly discovered water source here to make the story more believable! He had them search for one in secret for weeks! And two of them died! Just for this!”

I bloody knew it!

“What am I supposed to do now...” she said, as she stared down at the ground.

‘Miles... Can we do something for her?’

Hm... I’m sure we can at least find her some place to stay for now.

“Uhm, if you want, you can stay at my house for the time being,” Tomar suddenly said, standing next to me. “Nobody is using it at the moment.”

“What...?” Aelene said, as she glanced up at us.

“That could work,” I said. “And you can decide what you want to do next in peace.”

“But... my job... Actually... what is my job even going to... be...? I... need to do a job...!”

“For now, you don’t need to do anything. Just relax for a little while. And if you want, we’ll help you figure everything out later.”

“Really?” she asked.

“Of course.”

She looked at us with unbelieving eyes. Even if she had actually been an imposter by choice, in my mind she had suffered more than enough, and even Lilana appeared to agree.

“You seem like an entirely different person...” she said.

“Well... I did change a little bit.”

I felt like these two might be able to start over once I left Lilana. I still didn’t know what had happened between them, but her reactions to Aelene’s fate had definitely sounded like she saw her in a new light.

“Is this really okay?” she asked Tomar.

“Of course. The house is all the way down in the south-east of town though,” he said.

“That might actually be good...” she said.

“Alright, that settles that,” I said and held out a hand to help Aelene up. She wiped away her tears a little bit, grabbed my hand, and I finally pulled her to her feet, which actually felt a little awkward, because she was taller than Lilana.

“Thank you... Lilly.”

The way she said her name sounded like it had some kind of significance, but before I could think about it any more, a bell ringing in the distance interrupted my thoughts.

“Ugh, what is it n— Wait, is that...!?”

“It’s the beast warning bell!” Brie said, alarmed.

“Seriously!? It’s one thing after another today!”

I turned south, in the direction the ringing came from, and I could see a guard running up the main street in our direction, while Bren hurried towards us from the prison.

“Twenty beasts!!” the guard shouted from a distance, across the main square, and a handful of people who were just starting their day immediately fled the open space and returned to their homes.

“Twenty...?” I said. “What the...”

“Lilly!” someone said from behind and above me.

“Huh? Berla?” I asked as I turned around and saw her suddenly jump out of a window on the second floor, her crutches tucked under her arm. “Whoa!”

She fell, briefly landed on her one leg, and immediately transitioned into a role, to soften her fall. When she tried to jump up, however, she stumbled directly into my arms, almost making both of us fall.

“What was that!?” I asked in a panic.

“What’s wrong? Worked just as planned,” she said with a chuckle.

“Lilly!” the guard shouted once more, only a couple dozen meters away from us now. “Twenty beasts were sighted! They’re approaching from the forest in the south!”

“That’s more than expected...” Reurig said, suddenly standing next to me, having come from god knows where.

“It is... Well. Let’s go!” I said, but stopped after only two steps. “Wait, Aelene!”

“Huh...?” she said in surprise.

“What you did to attack us earlier, can you do that any time?”

“I... uhm... it was the first time I did that...”

“Attacked? What do you mean attacked!?” Berla asked.

“Later,” I said in response and kept talking to Aelene. “Give it a try!”

“O-okay!” she said and concentrated for a moment, until her aura whirled around her and then gathered around her arm, just like before.

“Alright, that works! You’re coming with us!” I said as I grabbed her hand and pulled her along.

“Wait, what? Outside!? To the beasts!?!? Please wait!”

“I’m sorry, but we need more power!!” I said.

I didn’t want to get too many people involved, but almost twice the expected amount of talking beasts was a serious problem. There was no way we would be able to handle them on our own.

All of us transitioned into a fast jog down the main street, while the guard who had come to inform us gave us more details. “They left the forest approximately five minutes ago, and they will reach the wall in about fifteen!”

“Got it!” I said and kept running.

A casual walk from the main square to the southern gate would typically take about thirty minutes, but we were already getting close to it after only ten. That was no big surprise, given our group of Fighters and Sourcerers, though I always admired how well Berla managed to keep up such a pace with her crutches. She had been fast from the start, but by this point she had come up with a technique to use them that I had never seen before, where she didn’t put both of them down to swing through, and instead essentially just hopped on her one, good leg, with large strides, while stabilizing herself and increasing the jump distance with one crutch at a time. It did look a little weird, but you could hardly argue about the result.

We were now coming up on the sidestreet that led to Tomar’s home, where Riala was waiting for us... together with her sister. “Keep going, I’ll be there in a minute!” I told the others, as I slowed down and came to a stop.

“Come on, sis! Let me go!” Riala said, held tightly at her shoulders by her sister.

“Lilly... how dangerous is it...?” Zara asked.

“Honestly... I don’t know yet. But this town might be doomed if we don’t stop them out there... We could really use your sister’s help.”

Her grip on Riala tightened for a brief moment, before she finally let go. “Please, please be careful,” she told her, before fixating me. “Take care of her!”

“I promise.”

“Thank you, sis!” Riala said, and the two of us started running after the others. The party is complete...

We reached the gate just in time, as I heard a guard yell “They’re almost here!” the second we arrived.

“Open the gate!” I instructed, and one half of the large, wooden gate slowly swung open, pulled by chains.

Grym quickly approached us from the side, a worried expression on his face. “Lilly, Tomar, are you really sure about this...?”

He hadn’t been a fan of the idea that we planned to go out alone, but eventually he had resigned. Having Berla and Reurig with us was one thing, as they knew how we fought and we trusted them, but a bunch of random guards would only get in the way.

“We are,” I responded, and we kept walking.

“Wait! You’re going to take the little girl!?” he asked.

“Don’t worry, she can handle herself,” I said, glancing back at him and the deeply confused expression on his face.

As our group, consisting of me/Lilana, Tomar, Riala, Berla, Reurig, and Aelene, stepped outside, we could see the beasts approaching in the distance, maybe five hundred meters away. They were fast, and they would be here in seconds, rather than minutes.

“T-those are too many! What am I even doing here!?” Aelene yelped.

“Just do as I say! And if a beast gets too close, you’re going to attack them like you did before, alright? It will be fine!”

“I’m not convinced!” she said.

“Trust her!” Tomar told her, and she reluctantly stopped complaining, as we walked straight in the beasts’ direction, until they were only about fifty meters away from us.

As I raised my sleeve and uncovered one particular script of the many on Lilana’s body, I signaled Tomar and Riala to do the same, and all three of us broke our control scripts, which were limiting the amount of mana we were exuding.

“Aelene, let your aura run wild, like you did when you first got it.”

“Uhm... okay!”

Since we knew that beasts were responding to mana, the hope was that our unfiltered auras would cause the beasts to hesitate at least a little. To my delight, it seemed to work, because they came to an immediate stop as our auras flared up. However, they weren’t the only ones who were surprised.

“Whoa!”

“Miles!?”

Something feels different...

I looked down at my hands, seeing a thick, white fog cover them. Glancing over at Tomar and Riala, they seemed to be in the same boat, though their auras looked even thicker. Only Aelene’s aura was like our previous one, albeit stronger.

“Huh. Maybe we should’ve tested this before...” I said in wonder.

Our mana output had changed somehow. Originally, it was exuded wildly, similar to that of beasts, but now it was flowing around us in a controlled way, unlike any aura I had seen before. We hadn’t removed these scripts since we applied them, because we wanted to avoid appearing like beasts to anyone, but apparently something had changed over the past couple weeks and months. Whatever was happening here, it did seem like the plan was working.

“I guess we don’t have time to stand around...”

As we resumed walking in the direction of the beasts, I whispered to Berla. “What do we look like to you right now?”

“I... I can’t even say. It’s not like a beast, but not like a god either... It’s just... powerful.”

“Well, that doesn’t sound half bad...”

Our group came to a stop about ten meters away from the beasts, with me in the front and Tomar and Riala next to me on either side. Forty eyes were staring us down, all of them looking like they were glowing red. A group of twenty wolf-type beasts, which would be estimated to belong to category three, based on their appearance and size.

“Can you talk?” I asked them, and one stepped up from the group.

“You... are the anomaly... What are you!?” the beast growled.

There it is again... “anomaly”...

We were right, these were talking beasts, they were looking for an anomaly, and they identified me as it for the second time. I could ask why they called me that, but if I thought about it, it seemed relatively obvious. My existence certainly wasn’t normal.

“Counter question. What is your problem with me?”

“You better give me an answer!” it warned.

“Or what?” I said, doing my best to sound intimidating. “I’ll make you a deal. I’ll answer one question for every question you answer.”

The beast seemed somewhat shaken. The one we had talked to before was curious as well, but it had believed itself to be far superior to us. That wasn’t the case with this one, which I attributed to our new aura.

It appeared to think my proposal over for a moment, while glancing between the three of us in the front, but also at Aelene. It was almost certainly assessing their chances to win, and just like the category six I fought before, it seemed to base its decision on our mana.

This is working way better than I could’ve hoped...

“You don’t belong here... Neither in this town nor this human!” the beast eventually said in a low and raspy voice.

Right, that’s what the other one implied as well...

“Okay, I’ll count that. Your turn.”

“WHAT ARE YOU!?” it bellowed.

“Hm... I’m a soul in the body of an awakened human. Does that answer your question?”

“Don’t play dumb with me, human! What is that mana of yours!?”

“Well—”

Wait... did it just say “mana?” Nobody but us uses that term... Even Oryn only ever called it “energy” and “aura”...

“We found a special way to practice mana control,” I said, making up a half-truth. “This is the result. My turn?”

The beast took another step and briefly growled at us, but it didn’t approach any further and didn’t say anything more. I didn’t know whether it would answer another question of mine, but I had to try.

Okay... we have a wannabe-RPG system, something akin to monsters and magic, a Calling that shows static noise, and if you factor in the timing, these guys might be the “moderators”...

“I’ll go into more detail if you’d like, but before that, who’re the admins?”

The beast tilted its head a little, maybe out of confusion or curiosity, and answered in a far less aggressive voice than before.

“Who taught you that word?”

“Honestly, I don’t remember. I’ve known about it for a long while.”

It’s always interesting how you don’t remember when and where you learned everyday words and tasks.

“The gods are the admins, of course,” it said.

“The gods...” I repeated. “I see...”

If the gods are the admins, and these beasts are the mods... then they basically work... for the gods...?

“Your turn,” I said.

And please let me ask another question...

It seemed to think for a moment, before it opened its jaw again.

“What have you done to the woods?”

“Oh, the mana barrier? We used scripture sigils to make the trees exude mana, to keep the other beasts away.”

Maybe not the best idea to just tell them, but they need to feel like they’re getting something out of this as well.

“A scripter...” it said quietly.

Did it just say “scripter!?”

Another term from my world. Programmers and scripters are closely related, and calling someone who writes Omega scripts a “scripter” was apt, but I hadn’t expected anyone here to know that word. Especially not some random beast that was here to kill me.

Admins... mods... scripters... I’m not inside a game back on earth, am I? No, that’s nonsense... this is obviously some kind of reality... But still...

“You say I don’t belong here. I’m inclined to agree that that’s probably the case, but where do I belong then?”

“In the body of a beast,” it said, as if it was obvious.

“What...?”

“You should’ve become one of us. That’s why we have to reset you, so this error can be fixed.”

... “Reset” me, huh? A nice way to say “kill you.” A beast though...? That’s not what happened when Gallas removed me from Tomar’s mind, is it...? But if that’s their sole mission, there’s no way this will end peacefully...

“My turn,” the beast said.

“Please,” I said, gesturing for it to ask its next question.

“Why are there so many awakened humans all of a sudden?”

“That was mostly a coincidence. One figured out how to get mana by accident... then another one found out... And just like that, there were suddenly a bunch of us.”

“That’s not supposed to happen...”

“I figured. Yet it did. Do you need to ‘reset’ awakened humans as well? Wait... dang it, does that count as a question?”

“We do,” the beast said with what looked like a sneer. “And it does.”

I felt as if the air around us suddenly shifted, and from one second to the next, the group of beasts split up, surrounding us. It might’ve figured the others could try to flee if they knew they were in danger as well.

“I believe you owe me one more answer though,” it said, as it readied itself.

“Fair is fair... go ahead...” I said.

“What’s your name?”

“My... What? Why?” I asked in bewilderment.

“I’m probably not going to meet another human as curious as you. I want to know what to remember you by.”

I briefly glanced back at Aelene and thought about my response. I could’ve said anything, really, but I felt like giving the beast my real name. I could always come up with an explanation for our guest later.

“It’s Miles,” I said.

The beast looked at me in surprise. “Like the creator...” it mumbled. “So curious... Farewell, Miles.”

Wait! What!?

As if on cue, all beasts jumped into action.