Ari cursed as a beam of light ripped past him. It wasn’t the first such beam to come at her. He was quite grateful for the ring as it had given him the abilities needed for this cursed game. The wings, however, were something he was still trying to get used to. Especially since they didn’t quite work the way he would have expected. Their mage Milly had explained it had to do with the nature of the Celestial Void. There wasn’t any air here, so wings just couldn’t work the way they did near the surface. Of course, Milly’s explanation had gone over his head, but he wasn’t exactly a mage. So the finer mechanics of magical theory were a bit beyond him. Not that he had time to think about this.

He looked over his shoulder to see the Celestial Serpent was still chasing him. Its great maw opened and another beam of light shot out with great force. He rolled to the left, and the beam narrowly ripped past him. He cursed his luck for encountering this great thing. He and the others had decided their best chance to win this little game was to split up, but now he was wishing they hadn’t. Or at the very least, had decided to work in pairs instead of alone. Not that it helped him much against this serpent. Which he suspected was mad since he took that crystal from it. Having dodged the attack, he returned one of his own. An arrow imbued with light magic shot from his bow and sailed across the void as he rolled to avoid another deadly beam.

The arrow struck true, and penetrated the scales of the massive serpent. Then the mana detonated scoring a small wound, and a telepathic roar was his answer followed by another of those deadly beams. Which he managed to dodge, by a hairsbreadth. A small chunk of his left gauntlet vanished with the energy beam, and then suddenly a blue-green beam cut into the serpent. Flowing straight from its tail to its head, it screamed telepathically as it was split in two. Its flesh charring from the energy of the attack. A moment later the Skylord appeared her wings beat lazily, and then he heard her voice in his head.

“How can you be having trouble with such a weak creature? Baby dragons hunt them for food,” said Arlie. He knocked an arrow into his bow, and thought back, “Weak? That serpent was nearly level six hundred, and as a large creature, it has a huge amount of vitality. Not to mention I don’t have a lot of skills suited for use against large creatures.”

She moved closer, and he heard her giggling, “yeah I saw. Your exploding arrow was rather pathetic.”

He unleashed his arrow imbued with mana it shot off with great velocity, and with a lazy turn, she dodged it. Making it look like it had been moving at a snails pace, and that she only had to step to the side to avoid the arrow. He followed up quickly and again his arrow sailed past her. She had easily avoided the bolt, and her hands began to glow, and a beam shot towards him the moment she pointed them at him. He tried to dodge, but the beam was far faster than the serpents, and she was better at tracking than the creature. Then he was greeted with a lovely blue box.

Milly was not enjoying his day. So far he had managed to collect four of those crystals, but they were almost always guarded by large powerful beasts. He had managed to kill a couple of them, but it had taken most of his mana to do it. He had tried to steal another from the Void Kraken that was chasing him, but he had failed to get it without the thing noticing. He kind of wished he was a rogue instead of a mage or at the very least had learned an invisibility spell.

The Kraken tried to reach out with a tentacle, but he blasted it with a firebolt. The creature roared telepathically, and he clutched his head. While muttering, “I hate it when they do that.” Then suddenly a light beam erupted from the Kraken, and he was forced to dodge. He cursed those two. Mana beams seemed to be a very popular form of attack for void creatures. Every single one that he had fought could use at least one beam attack. Panting slightly, he noticed a floating rock ahead and bolted for it. He noticed it had some craters and was hoping to hide in it.

The creature reached out with a number of tentacles at once, and he was forced to veer off to avoid them. The tentacles chased after him, and a few came from ahead, and he cursed the things reach. Seeing no choice he chanted a few fire bolts and flung them at the tentacles. Once again rewarding him with screams from the creature, and his vision darkened a bit. A warning sign that he was almost out of mana. Then another beam lanced out from the creature, and he barely dodged it. The beam tore into the rock he was heading for and out the other side, and he gulped.

Internally he was cursing, he had just the spell to deal with it, but not the mana to cast the spell he needed.  Fortunately, he didn’t need to curse for much longer as suddenly the space around him erupted. Bluegreen bolts of energy zipped by him, and exploded at random. He managed to dodge a couple, and then one of them exploded near him. After that, the only thing he saw was a blue box filling his vision.

Rei was having the worst day of his life. First, a crazy goddess abducted them for this crazy game. Who also promptly changed his name to a girl’s name. Worse he was having difficulty remembering his old one, and one of his squadmates tried to tempt fate. Which may have been why less than five minutes after he had split off from the others he ran into a fucking dragon.

Which is why he was now stuck flying around in the middle of nowhere playing a deadly game of tag with her pups. He couldn’t even fight back because mommy had taken all of his weapons. She didn’t seal his magic, but he was terrible at it. His basic light bolt spells were so weak that he might as well have been trying to hurt them with feathers.

He ducked left as the deadly breath of a dragon flew over his shoulder. The heat close enough that he could feel the wings on his back heat up. He was beginning to really hate tag. Especially the draconic version of the game. Looking around he saw a few rocks, and hoped to use them to lose his pursuers. If he was really lucky he might even find his first crystal in those rocks, but with his luck he doubted that.

He picked up speed, and had to dodge a beam that one of the pups sent at him. The beam narrowly avoided clipping his wings, and he cursed again. Fortunately, he was almost at the rocks and dived into the formation. Just in time for one of the rocks to eat a dragon’s breath attack. The rock melting under the heat. He wasn’t shocked, even baby dragons could produce a lot of heat. Especially the more powerful dragon breeds, and he had gotten the impression that Void Dragons were a very powerful dragon breed. He used the dust and flame to cover his escape, but before he could celebrate escaping from the baby dragons he was greeted by a flame to the face. Just before a screen dotted his vision he noted that he had run right into another baby Void Dragon.

Jesse slipped behind a rock and smiled as he found what he was looking for. He slipped the large crystal into his bag, and then checked the coast. It was still clear, which was a good thing. So far he had found the game wasn’t that tough. All he had to do was find these crystal things, and since any powerful creature had one in its nest it wasn’t hard to find them. Getting them was the tough part, but he was a rogue and sneaking around was their specialty.

Since the coast was clear he slipped out into the tunnel and carefully moved past the Serpent that called this rock home. He was careful not to disturb the dust, and stay out of sight. Since sound wasn’t a thing here, he didn’t have to worry about making a noise, but these things were still sensitive to vibrations in the rock they slept on.

Fortunately, he was able to get past the serpent without trouble, and was soon moving out of the floating island at a fair pace. He didn’t let his guard down, however, and paid attention to his surroundings. Sticking to the shadows just in case something came through the tunnel.

As he walked down the tunnel, he considered his experience with this game so far. He had a little bit of bad luck at the start when a Void Leviathan tried to eat him, but he managed to wound the thing and give it the slip. Not long after he found his first crystal not far from where he encountered the thing, only to later learn that it was the creature's nest. The thing found him, and was understandably not pleased he was there. Fighting it in an enclosed space had not been pleasant, and his armor was shredded afterwards. He was glad that he had thought to pack a few potions as he had needed one after that fight. Having to regrow an arm and two wings was not very pleasant. The wings were nice in that they let him fly around in this environment, but they also got in the way when trying to be stealthy. As for the creature he hadn’t killed it, but he did manage to knock it out cold. Which was good enough in his books.

After that first encounter, he went looking for more crystals, but after not finding any for awhile on a hunch he checked another nest out, and found his second crystal. Which he almost managed to retrieve without being noticed, but his stupid wings got in the way, and the creature found him. That fight went better than the last, and he was able to escape it with minor wounds.

He found a few more crystals after that, and all in the dens of Void Monsters. They were strong creatures so fighting them was difficult. Fortunately, he had a number of skills that allowed him to slip out of sight, and evade detection. A few of them even thwarted magical means of detection. It was how he had managed to get away with the crystals, but he had no idea how the others were doing. He suspected that they actually had to kill the things, but he didn’t feel that was worth the effort.

He stopped thinking of the past when he stepped out of the tunnel, and into the void. He looked around and saw nothing. So feeling it was safe he began to take flight, and then there was a flash of light. He registered a brief flash of pain, and then was greeted with a blue window. Much to his shock and surprise.

Four small girls appeared in a wooden room. All four of them were completely naked and confused. It took them a few minutes to realize who they were. The girls looked very similar to each other, and had almost identical features. It was like looking at a set of quadruplets, but they each had a different hair color. One had green hair, another had blue, and the next had red hair. While the last one had silver hair. Once they realized who they were they began inspecting their bodies, both with their hands and the aid of the mirror that was conveniently in the room.

With each passing moment, their expressions darkened as panic set in. Before they could actually start to panic, a single figure appeared in a chair in the middle of the room.

“I did hint at this when I gave you your new names, but congratulations you four are now the cutest girls in town. In fact, you are now the poster children for the local loli fan-club. You will get enjoy dress up, hugs, and all-day petting sessions. Which should make life on the local guild master a little easier.

I have also rewritten reality for you. You four are now much younger than you used to be. You are also sisters, quadruplets in fact.” she paused and surveyed their expressions. Each had slightly different expressions, but it was plain to anyone that they didn’t like what they were hearing. One of them the girl with silver hair interrupted, and she didn’t even try to be polite, “You damnable evil goddess! You can’t just rewrite our histories! Give me back my body!”

Arlie glared at her, and said, “I could give you another curse, but I am sure you already happy with the five you already have.”

Jesse wisely shut up, but she did continue to glare in anger. Arlie’s expression returned to normal, and then she continued, “you will find that in your new lives that you are all fifteen, but you won’t get any bigger with age. You are in fact fully grown, already. Your mother has had a number of difficulties in her life, and racked up quite the debt. One that she paid by selling you four off as debt slaves, and you were purchased by the local guild master Phyllis Greybeard because of how cute you were. She figured she would be able to get more done, if the town was busy fawning over you. She added on a room to her house just for you, and had Misaki the dungeon summon a demon maid to watch over you. Officially you are to work as errand girls for the guild, so while your mother may have screwed you over life has worked out for you, mostly.”

With an almost resigned tone of voice the red girl spoke up, but she was polite about it. “Miss Skylord, does that mean we are starting over?”

“No, Airi. You will get to keep your levels, skills, and abilities. However, you will also find yourselves compelled to protect the town from monsters. In about three years, Phyllis will allow you to join the guild as adventurers and you will start taking quests in the area. Of course, as debt slaves, it will be Phyllis who chooses which quests you take. Anyway, about your boons, they should make your lives easier. Rei I am sorry to say you didn’t earn any boons, but that is okay.  Nothing wrong with not earning a gift. While Jesse earned the most, but I gave her some curses to go with them. Perhaps she will learn to hold her tongue. You can find them in your status page, the full one not the truncated or simplified version.”

The blue-haired girl, Rei while looking down at her feet asked a question,  “um, uh will we ever get our real bodies back?” her tone was quite nervous and it made her look quite cute.

“You can get your old bodies back yes, but it would take you a while. Not sure you will want them back by the time you can afford it. Before I will restore your bodies, I want you to collect one million Synthien crystals each. They are kind of rare around here, but they can be found aplenty near volcanos, and in the void. I’ll leave you four special stones that will let you play our little game again. It will be played in a special void realm, and instead of boons, you will get crystals based on your score. If you do get enough crystals you can just ask Misaki for help on contacting me. So I suggest you stay on the dungeon’s good side,” answered Arlie. Rei slumped to the ground, and said, “Well, I didn’t think it would be easy, but that sounds kind of expensive.”

Arlie surveyed the group of four, and even looked at the girl who had been silent the whole time. She was about to leave when she finally said something, “Uh, isn’t changing reality expensive even for gods?”

Arlie smiled, and replied, “that is a very good question. It really depends on the god, and how big the change is. Rewriting all of reality is impossible even for me, but small changes like this one are very easy. It cost me less than a percent of my power to make this change. Anyway, I have already discussed everything I need to so I will get going. Oh yes, your caretaker is called Lyla. I do hope you get along with her.”

Then Arlie vanished from the room, as she did the room changed. Four beds manifested along with a few sparse decorations. A chest at the base of each bed, and a few end tables appeared next to the beds. On one wall a painting appeared of a landscape. None of them gained clothes on their naked bodies, but a debt slave’s collar appeared on their necks. On the wall opposite the bed formed a window, the glow on it telling them it was enchanted. Outside they could see the setting sun, but none of them needed that to know what was going on. New memories had entered their heads as soon as Arlie left. They knew she hadn’t actually left the area. They now remembered, thanks to implanted memories, seeing her drop a baby off next door, and they could hear her voice through the open door. It sounded like she was talking to someone, but they couldn’t make out the words. One of them walked towards the open door and closed it. Then she turned around, and said, “This is officially the worst day of my life. I think I will just sleep the rest of it away.” Then she went to the nearest bed and slipped under the thin blanket.

JCountry

Was the chapter enjoyable? Did you see their fates coming?