“Um… well you remember all those things you killed? They dropped a ton of Air Essence, so I went back and collected it! The Essence, like, Air essence I mean, is part of what you need for explosives right? So like, I just put… well I made it explode,” Millie explained excitedly to me as chunks of meat and stone continued to rain down around us.

“Wow, okay. That’s smart. There’s so much to this game I don’t know and haven’t bothered to find out,” I chuckled, turning back to the smoking crater that used to be the sally port. “Maybe we should get moving though. We need to go to the capital, whatever its name is.”

“Tieille. That’s the name of the capital. How have you gotten so good if you don’t know how anything works though?” Millie asked curiously.

“Blind luck, rule of cool, and hanging out with smart people like you,” I grinned, pushing her hood back and ruffling her hair.

She was too cute, and it was almost impossible not to tease her. I’d have liked a little sister like Millie back in the day. Even though we were probably around the same age, she just had an innocence to her that made me think of her like this I guess. An innocence, despite just having blown up like thirty people just now.

“Hey!” she protested. “I need that to protect my identity! We’re wanted fugitives now! We need to stay in-cog-nito.”

The way she emphasised the word incognito was also damn adorable. Gosh!

“Uh huh,” I laughed teasingly. “So which way is Tieille anyway? Just follow the western road I assume?”

“Yes,” she grumbled, making a show of fixing her hood, although her cheeks had gone very red.

“Alright, let’s go then little Millie!” I teased, moving off in the direction we needed to go.

 

****

 

The forest was warm and quiet as the day progressed towards noon, the late morning light filtering through the evergreen leaves of the trees. It should have been a lot colder that it was to be honest, we were somewhat close to the southern pole of the world if I remembered right. The climate was similar to the north of germany had been during the middle ages, before humanity fucked with the thermostat. Maybe it was the trees sheltering us from the wind that made it feel warmer?

“No no, this one. That one will make it taste awful! I think… wait, give it to me,” Millie said from beside me, snatching the plant out I had been holding out of my fingers.

We’d had to stay the night in one of those trees again after we left the port town, although this time there wasn’t any creepy things waiting outside, as we were too far away from the Bleaklands for the mist to reach us. If we hadn’t been fugitives, we might have found a nice cozy inn along the road, with a hot meal… and a bath.

“No… this one would get us high actually,” she said, slipping it into her herb pouch and earning a startled look from me.

“What? I’m twenty one! I’ve been high before, and drunk,” she said defensively.

“Twenty one? Really? Damn… I figured you had to be younger than me,” I said in surprise.

“Wait, how old are you?” she blinked, staring at my face more intently like she could figure out my age from my ingame avatar.

“Uh, twenty…” I said, awkwardly looking away. I mean, one year difference wasn’t much, but it was still surprising to learn that the cute little girl in front of me was, in fact, older than me.

“Yes!” she giggled, pumping a fist, “I’m older than Tami! You hear that viewers?! I’m older than the Mysterious Demon Girl.”

Oh crap… I forgot she was streaming. Great, yet another thing that my creepy stalker fans knew about me. I really needed to be more careful about what I said when I was with Millie.

“Um… yeah. Anyway, so you’re saying that this one, this one, and this one are edible?” I asked, drawing the topic of conversation back from my personal details.

Maybe I’d lean into the whole Mysterious Demon Girl thing when I’d finished my transition, but until that point I was keen to stay as under the radar as possible.

“Right! Yeah, you can probably use them for seasoning… I don’t actually pay much attention to the taste of the herbs I collect and catalogue so you’ll have to explore that side of things on your own,” Millie nodded.

“Awesome, thank you,” I smiled, before carefully beginning to taste each herb.

See, we’d run into a problem as we slunk through the forest near the road. We’d run out of food. Millie had been very good at pointing out things we could eat to stay alive, but there were only so many roots you could eat before you contemplated burning the forest down.

So I’d decided that I wanted to try my hand at cooking inside Cora. I loved cooking outside Cora, so an entirely new world, so to speak, with both ingredients I was familiar with, and ones that didn’t exist in reality? That sounded like a whole lot of fun!

Which brought me to where we were now. Millie was finding me random plants that were safe to eat, and I was taste testing them to see if there were any that I could use as herbs. It would have been a good idea to do this earlier when I wasn’t a fugitive from the law and being hunted by a mysterious organisation of thugs, but what can you do?

I managed to find one or two herbs from this latest batch that she’d handed me that might work, and I put them in my inventory and used the note function to write down my thoughts on the taste of each one. Most of what I was finding would only be useful in dishes with a heavy meaty flavour. We actually found some thyme earlier, which I was pretty happy about.

“Millie, I think I’m going to finally tackle all these level up notifications, then go and find some meat for us to eat along with all the herbs and spices you’ve found me,” I said, stretching up onto my tiptoes to arch my back.

I felt my shirt fall open more, I’d unbuttoned it to deal with a weirdly hot day and it felt really good. There was something about looking down and seeing the rise of my breasts, clad in a silk bra, followed by the curve of my waist and hips on either side, and then my smooth flat stomach leading down into my pants.

My pants rode low, and there was just the barest hint of a mound that, on another girl, would have sent me wild. Because it was my body though, I felt a deep giddy excitement that was very obviously my mind’s reaction to the fact that when I looked down, I saw a girl’s body. I was going to be hard pressed to cover myself back up after having spent a day looking down and getting an instant shot of euphoria straight to the brain. It felt so so so so so good! Fuck I was happy… please, oh scary pod-locking entity known as MaTRON, don’t fuck with my transition?

When I looked over at Millie mid stretch, I caught her staring rather blatantly at my stomach, her cheeks beginning to colour. Oh girl, you are definitely not straight. The way you keep looking and reacting to me is just so very, very gay.

“Millie,” I laughed, coming down from the stretch and smiling at her.

“Wha— ? What? Oh! Ummm…” she said, blinking and stumbling over her words.

“I’m going to do all these level ups I’ve been putting off and then go hunting for food,” I repeated gently. Handle the baby gay with care.

“Okay… wait, what level are you?” she asked, finally coming back from whatever interesting fantasies had been floating around in that head of hers.

“Uh, let me check,” I said, bringing my character sheet up. “It says I’m level eleven.”

“Oh cool!” Millie smiled.

“What about you?” I prompted, curious what level she was now.

“What about me?” she asked, staring at my abdomen again.

I needed to button my shirt back up if she was going to be talking to my admittedly amazing stomach the whole time.

“What level are you, ya dingus,” I said with an exasperated sigh, folding my shirt over to cover myself.

“Ooh um… I’m level twenty five,” she said, her face flashing disappointment for a moment.

Damn! She was way higher level than me!

“Wow! What are you still doing around here?” I asked in disbelief. This was newbie land!

“I don’t know… the other places seem scary… I have to like, upgrade my sneak more and stuff too,” she mumbled, clearly making excuses for something.

“Well, when I end up leaving this area, how about you come with me. Hopefully with Rora too, we’ll go on an adventure and you can be like, well whatever role you want really because neither myself nor Rora is a tank or healer,” I said as kindly as I could. I kinda wanted to keep Millie around. She was fun.

“Yes!” she exclaimed excitedly. “Yes! Please! The game has been so hard without… people to play with.”

“Well then, we’ll make our own little team shall we?” I winked.

“Yeah! We can be a party, but not like those LFG parties where they get all angry at each other and then storm off. We’ll be one of those parties that is like ‘I got your back sister. Our foes will fall to our might. Don’t lose heart!’ and then we’ll— “ she rambled, before cutting herself off and turning an even brighter shade of red. “Sorry… I got carried away. I used to watch a lot of magical girl anime and I start getting all ‘The Power Of Friendship!’ some times. Super embarrassing…”

“Yeah I’m starting to doubt that you’re capable of saying anything that isn’t hella adorable,” I commented dryly, then turned to my daunting level up menu. Here. We. Go. This is what I get for leaving it until now to deal with my level ups.

Through my menus I saw Millie’s face heat up in another blush, and she mumbled something about seeing a mushroom she wanted to get her hands on. I watched her wander off with a shake of my head. No wonder she was popular as a streamer, she was as cute as a button and wicked smart.

Being the responsible player that I was, I made sure to increase all my stats by a little bit, since this wasn’t the type of game where you could just ignore certain stats or whatever. Once I’d given some love to the lonely stats, I put a bunch into both Power and Strength to increase my damage, then a few into Speed and Endurance. Stamina was the wall I kept hitting at the moment, so I hoped putting a few points into Endurance would help.

When I looked at the ability trees and constructor though, I was stumped. There was so much going on. I wanted to get myself a more comprehensive array of elements to choose from. Explosions and fire were all well and good, but the moment I ran into a fire elemental or something, I’d be fucked. Wait… I had been fucked by a “fire elemental or something”.

Snapping back from those fond memories, I stared at the trees in confusion for several long seconds before I threw up my hands and messaged my sister.

Tamipesagniyah: HELP. I DON’T KNOW WHAT TO DO WITH THIS DUMB ABILITY TREE SYSTEM.

LipsAndShades: Hello to you too sis. What’s confusing that poor horny brain of yours?

Tamipesagniyah: All of it… help me…

LipsAndShades: Sigh. Kinda busy right now, but give me a moment and I’ll call you.

Tamipesagniyah: Ooooooo… are you getting some?

LipsAndShades: ???? what? No! I’m fighting a battle!

Tamipesagniyah: oh… my bad…

While she was fighting, I stared aimlessly at my ability trees for a moment, and I absently noticed a node that intrigued me. The node was called "Momentum Transfer", and it was in the unarmed tree. Interested now, I clicked on it to get a description.

"This node allows an object's momentum to be stored and manipulated within the ability it is slotted."

Okay… so could I use… oh wow there were so many ways I could use this! First off, I rushed to the ability constructor and selected a new ability. The constructor itself had gained a slot since the last time I’d looked at it, and I now had five slots to work with. I placed the Momentum Transfer node into the slot, and was then stumped as to how to actually get what I wanted after that. Luckily for me, however, that was the moment Taylor chose to call.

“Hey sis,” she smiled through the video chat window.

“Hey sis,” I smiled sheepishly back.

“So what’s got you confused? Surely you— Who is that elf in the background and why is she stuffing a wild mushroom in her mouth?” Taylor asked incredulously, and I turned around to see Millie eating the mushroom she’d seen… with gusto.

“What the fuck?” I said in disbelief.

Both Taylor and I watched in confused awe as Millie continued to stuff the mushroom in her mouth, until she started choking and sputtering, her face going red and breaking out in spots. I sent a worried look to my sister and took a step towards Millie, only to stop when she pulled a vial of some strange looking liquid out of her inventory. She tipped her head back and… and poured the concoction down her nose.

I was rooted to the spot, fascinated by her display of completely bizarre behaviour, and I could see my sister out of the corner of my eye, biting her lip in concentration as she watched. Slowly, Millie’s red face and spots began to recede, and she spat the rest of the mushroom back out. She smiled happily, navigating through menus that we couldn’t see, and began to type. Was she… taking notes?

“I think…” I said, like a scientist watching an interesting experiment, “That she’s trying to test the effects of the mushroom, or maybe the antidote she gave herself? The nose application was… especially strange, but I’ve been learning a lot about my new friend this past day and a bit. I suddenly realise that there might be another reason why she has a following. That was terribly entertaining to watch.”

“Yeah, I’ll say… wow. That is not something you see every day,” Taylor agreed from over my shoulder. I turned to look at her, and caught an odd expression on her face. “She’s certainly… made an impression on me. She's actually kinda cute…"

“Yeah… you should go and watch a VOD of yesterday’s shenanigans. She lured like thirty people into a trap and then blew them up. There was a carpet of raw meat around the blast zone,” I replied, my eyes turning back to my strange little friend. Millie was cute, yeah… but Taylor had surprised me there.

“I think… I think I’ll pass on that one actually,” my sister said, sounding slightly nauseous. “Are you going to tell me what you need help with, by chance, or are we going to keep watching your friend?”

“Oh right… So, I have this node from the unarmed tree, and it says it allows me to store momentum right? And use it in the ability? Anyway, I want to make an ability that lets me take say, my forward momentum, and shift it to whatever direction I want,” I explained.

“Oh that sounds like a cool node! Alright well there’s a number of ways you could do it, but if I were you I’d grab a Variable Direction node… no wait, grab the Directional Specification node. It should be one of the standard nodes that starts unlocked,” she said.

I followed her instructions, placing both the nodes in my ability constructor, then asked, “Now what?”

“Alright, grab… um, you’re self cast magic right? So get the Self Activation node and put it in too,” she said, and waited for me to nod that I’d done it. “Okay does it say it’s a viable ability?”

“No… it’s giving me an error,” I said, looking at the blinking red icon in the bottom of my screen. “It says, ‘This Ability needs an input’.”

“Right, then grab a Self Specification node, I think, and connect it to the.. Fuck… um, the store momentum node or whatever you called it,” she said, pinching the bridge of her nose in thought.

The error message went away with the addition and changed to a blinking green indicator that said the ability was viable.

“Oh! That made it work!” I exclaimed happily. “Damn, this shit is complicated.”

“Yeah, they said they wanted it to be a proper magic system, but in a gamified format. Turns out, by magic system, they just meant coding with extra steps,” she chuckled.

“Oh no! Taylor! You tricked me into playing a game about math! You sneaky bitch!” I laughed.

Cackling like a stereotypical evil witch, Taylor winked through the video call. “My plan this whole time! Trick my mathematically challenged sister into playing a game with abstract math in it!”

“Yeah yeah, laugh all you want,” I giggled, poking my tongue out at her.

“Oh, my dear twin sister, was that a giggle that just escaped thine lips?” she teased with twinkling eyes.

“Oh shut up! Thanks for the help, go kill people or something you bloody menace,” I rolled my eyes.

“No problem Tami… and you hang in there alright? I asked my friend about.. Um, MaTRON. They work at Hangshe, the devs, so hopefully he gets back to me,” Taylor said, getting serious for a moment.

“Will do… I feel fine so far,” I said.

“Great. Mum and Dad say there’s already changes going on by the way. Get them to show you if they call. Your face seems to be changing pretty rapidly under the surface. Bone structure is shifting. Your shoulders have lost like an inch on either side,” she told me, her eyes searching my face to gauge my reaction.

“Really?” I breathed, feeling a fluttering excitement in my chest. Wow… it was really happening? Like, already? It was starting with my bones too… I wonder how the process was meant to go?

“Yeah! So there’s already some positive changes going on,” she smiled.

“Awesome… thank you so much Taylor,” I said sincerely. It was a huge morale boost to hear that I was already seeing results.

“No problem. I’ve got to get back to fighting, but we’ll touch base again tomorrow okay? Message me when it’s a good time for you. Being tongue deep in another girl doesn’t count as a good time by the way, just so we’re clear,” she said, teasing me again.

“You spend an awful lot of time thinking about me doing stuff to other women you know,” I teased back. “That’s kinda weird.”

“Oh shut up, you’re fun to tease. Bye now!” she said, hanging the call up rather abruptly.

Chuckling to myself, I went back to my ability constructor and got to work. I had a few more rule of cool abilities I wanted to add…

 

****

 

I was grinning, like, ear to ear grinning. This was amazing! The feeling of my strange leathery feathers rustling as they rode the air was incredible, and I could have stayed up here all day. Unfortunately, I couldn’t glide endlessly above the tree tops, not unless I wanted to get seen by those that were no doubt hunting for Millie and I along the nearby road.

I was currently circling above a large clearing a mile or so north of where I’d told my companion to wait, staring down at my prey thanks to a new passive. One of the next abilities I’d created, was a passive for greatly enhanced vision. If I was going to be flying, I needed to be able to see what was happening on the ground.

The deer were happily grazing on the lush grasses that grew in the clearing, completely unaware of what was about to hit them. Literally. I activated that first ability that Taylor had helped me make, and pointed my horizontal momentum straight down towards my target, a large buck below.

I plummeted instantly, my stomach protesting loudly as I changed direction without informing it. My descent was blistering, and I hoped to all the gods of this game that my next ability worked, because if not… well I’d be respawning back in that town with the new hole in the wall. Whatever it was called.

I activated my ability, shifting my orientation so that my feet would strike first and then applying it to them. The impact was everything I’d hoped for. I stopped, hovering in midair the moment I touched the buck, my feet transfering my momentum via the ability I had activated into the buck. Suddenly, it wasn’t me who had just reached terminal velocity, but the buck, and there was a sickening crunch as it “hit” the ground. It sounded like a considerable number of the bones in its body had broken… like, probably all of them.

I gave a whoop of exhilaration as the other animals of the herd fled in uncomprehending terror from the strange bird of prey that had just landed among them. My plan had worked flawlessly! Of course, if the buck had sensed something was wrong and twitched sideways… well it would be me dead on the ground with a million broken bones, but who cares, it worked!

Now I just had to cut this thing up…

I pulled out the knife that Millie had given me and got to the grisly work of butchering the animal. I had no idea if the texture and toughness of the meat was going to be up to the standards of a world class restaurant or anything after its instant surprise tenderising, but it would definitely be edible. I put all the meat into my inventory after butchering it, even going as far as to take the bones, just in case they were worth something or I ended up making a stew.

Having done all that, I leapt into the air and began my flight back to Millie, keeping an eye on the surrounding woods in case I spotted something that might be a problem. It turned out to be a good idea to stay on the lookout, because sure enough, I saw glimpses of our pursuers through the trees. Before they could look up and spot me, I dove low over the treetops, skimming dangerously just a few feet above the tallest trees. I’d reach my friend before them for sure, but how fast I did it increased our chances of getting away.

I could only hope that those I’d seen were the vanguard and there weren’t people further ahead.

When I reached the larger than normal tree that served as my landmark, I dropped through a gap in the branches and rushed around to where Millie had been waiting.

Thankfully, she’d waited where I told her, looking up with a surprised smile from a pile of herbs she was messing around with.

“Millie, we gotta go, like right now. There’s Red Pins a few hundred meters back who are pretty obviously tracking us,” I gasped, trying to catch my breath.

“Alright, can you put this stuff in your inventory while I set up a… surprise for them?” she asked innocently.

“Surprise?” I asked in alarm, reaching forward to start putting her herbs in my inventory.

“Watch,” she winked, dashing towards where our trail entered the open ground underneath the large tree.

She carefully strung a very thin wire between two trees, then up into one of them, tying a little packet of something on the end. It looked as though if the wire was disturbed, the packet would swing down and hit whoever had triggered the trap.

“What does it do?” I asked curiously.

“There’s a powder in the packet. It’s a very, very nasty poison. Dying to it isn’t really all that fun... trust me,” she said, grimacing at a memory. “I can’t wait for them to start screaming…”

Whoa. Millie. Damn girl…

“Ohhh-kay… Well, let’s go before they get here. Sorry, but I don’t think we should stay to watch,” I said, suddenly feeling a little scared of my small terrifying friend. She was cute, sure… but also worrying.