“Got better?” Lostina asked, almost laughing. “Damn that author.”

As she said that, she winced, and then frowned.

“Everything alright?” Theora asked.

“Yeah. Just — did you hear what I said?”

“You said ‘damn that author’.”

Lostina tucked her left hair strand behind her ear. She looked at Theora, warily, bracing herself, and then added, “People reviving after being killed isn’t supposed to be a thing in this story.”

Theora bit her lip. “I happen to be somewhat sturdy.”

Lostina shoved her glass away, then leaned forward on her table, almost reaching across, her eyes widened. “You heard me! I can tell you things? Wait, why can I tell you things? I should be getting censored. It got censored earlier, when I was complaining to the barkeeper.”

“Tell me what things?”

Lostina waved around. “That this is just a story? You are a character. Don’t worry, no character of note, or anything like that, I don’t think you even that much existed in the original. I thought I couldn’t tell anyone… Maybe you are so insignificant it doesn’t matter.”

Theora nodded. “I’m aware that this is a story. I entered it a while ago, through a device specifically made to travel into books.”

Someone squeezed themselves behind Theora to reach another table, and she adjusted her chair to make more space. The tavern was very busy, and their talk got drowned out in the ambient noise.

Lostina seemed a little surprised, and pulled up her eyebrows. “Really? You came into Procrastinating the Apocalypse? Voluntarily? Huh. And you chose to be a baker?” She chuckled to herself, picking up her glass for another sip.

Theora hadn’t chosen to become a baker, but she didn’t see anything wrong with it, either. In fact, she was rather happy about her Class, so she just stared back. Also, Procrastinating the Apocalypse? Had Theora taken a wrong turn somewhere?

“I was under the assumption that the book I entered was called To Hell With the Author,” she said.

Lostina spat some orange tea across the table. “What? Wait, what’s that book about?”

“Some girl called Lostina is reincarnated into a story, and wants to take revenge on the author by saving her favourite character.”

Lostina buried her head in her hands. “I see. Fuck me, I guess. So I’m the main character of that book you entered?”

“Yes. I was hoping that following your trail would lead me to my companion, who I got split from upon arrival.”

After a moment, Lostina sighed. “God, I’ll need a moment to process this all. Sorry. Am in an extremely bad mood. Trying not to let it out on you, but I’m pretty sure I’m failing.”

“I am not too happy, either,” Theora said, and looked around. “I was unaware this would be dystopian fiction.”

She snorted. “What? This? Just standard fantasy. What makes you say that?” She frowned, and then added. “Oh, right. You did get murdered. Well, get used to it, I suppose…”

A few seconds passed, the sound of people chatting and laughing in the tavern drumming around, and spicy smells from the kitchen waving through. Lostina scratched her neck. “Not gonna lie though. I appreciate the company, especially if I can be fucking honest without prompting a censoring error. Those tick me off. That kind of makes things easy. I can lament to you and you can meet your ‘companion’.”

“Yes, feel free to ‘lament’.”

“You’re kinda nice, huh?” Lostina said, smiling. “Well, don’t mind if I do. Truth is, so far this all sucks. I kinda want to meet up with Gonell, but maybe I’ll just feel sick when I see her, so. There’s… some stuff nearby that I could fetch to give myself a levelling advantage. I suppose that’s as good an idea as any to start with.”

“You know a lot about this world?”

“Yeah,” Lostina murmured. “Spent the better part of my life compiling all knowledge of it into sheets, so I can write my spin-offs.”

Somehow, more than half of what that girl was saying went far over Theora’s head. “Please don’t let yourself be influenced by my presence,” she said. “Act like you would on your own. Dema will know what you’ll do.”

“And you don’t?”

“Didn’t read the story,” Theora admitted, and Lostina scoffed.

“Would have been too nice.” She stared at her glass for a while, falling into thoughts. Her gaze turned serious, and somewhat unhappy.

“Are you alright?”

“Yeah,” Lostina said, then sighed. “I’m just wondering — what’s the point of a level advantage if I can’t even change anything? If it will all turn to shit anyway.”

Somehow, that struck Theora as odd. Hadn’t she only tried once so far?

“Are you sure there is nothing you can change?”

Lostina’s gaze turned unfocussed for a moment. “Well, yeah? When I tried to derail the plot in the King’s throne room, I received an error.” She stared a while longer, folding her brows, and pulled back from the table. “Actually. That would have been a big change, to be honest. It would have completely destroyed the entire story. Maybe smaller changes could work?”

“Maybe,” Theora affirmed. Her gaze fell on the glass of orange juice left in the centre of the table. Normally, she didn’t drink a lot, but… She was really thirsty. She did not have money. “Could I perhaps… drink a bit of that? I lost a lot of blood.”

Lostina waved off. “Oh sure, whatever. Don’t intend to pay for it anyway.”

That made Theora blink, and she proceeded to tell herself she wasn’t all that thirsty anyway, probably. Meanwhile, Lostina got lost in thought. She was chewing on her thin lower lip, her arms folded in front of her chest.

It was… a little bit like Dema. The scheming, the disregard for paying people, the fact that they had both been thrown into a completely impossible situation. Dema’s impossible situation was Theora, who’d one day entered her prison to end her, and Lostina’s impossible situation was having to deal with the upcoming death of that character. And both of them were trying to find a way out, with their plans.

Somehow, Theora really wanted Lostina to succeed. Because if she could succeed, then maybe…

Theora gulped.

“Alright,” Lostina said eventually, leaning back forward, resting her head on her hand. In doing so, one of her strands got squeezed between her chin and a few of her fingers, and Theora wondered if that was on purpose or just happened. “I think I may have an idea for… a dry run. Let’s call it that. Even though it’s cruel to say that.” 

“Oh?”

“So, yes, maybe you are right. I need to try smaller changes first. There’s one thing that happens a few days from now, but in the original story, it’s only ever referenced in hindsight, and it’s part of Gonell’s backstory. So, it’s not the main plot. Perhaps that allows us to change it. And whatever we learn from that… I can use that in the big event, seven months from now.”

“What’s going to happen a few days from now?”

“Gonell will visit a little settlement on the edge of the kingdom. And then…” She took a deep breath. “Let’s just say, it would be nice if we could be around.”

Theora nodded. “Will we get there in time?”

“We’ll definitely need to hurry, especially considering we have no money, and need to solve that first.”

Right. No money. Travelling would probably require funds.

“But before we get into that,” Lostina continued, “You don’t know anything about the setting of this story, right?”

“I know very little. Please, assume that I know nothing.”

“Alright, then, if we’re going to travel larger distances, it’s very likely that we’ll meet Errata. So, if we do. We run. Okay? We run.”

“We run,” Theora repeated. “Why do we run? What’s an Errata?”

Lostina took another sip of orange juice to prepare for her explanation, then put the glass down again, this time even closer to Theora.

“So, like. The big conflict of this story is that there’s these mindless automatons invading the land from beyond the veil; that, and tons of intrigue within the King’s family. In any case, these automatons enter the world through rifts, and if you’re in the wrong spot at the wrong time, you’re gonna die. They kill people, absorb their life energy, and return back to their home, where they use it to build more of themselves. Like a virus. They operate on a very limited set of instructions. Machines, essentially. They are called Errata.”

“If we meet an Errata, we run.”

“Erratum, is the singular. But yes. We run.”

“Why do we run,” Theora murmured, not making it sound like a question. “Why do we not defeat them?”

Lostina let out a little huff. She seemed to try being patient. “Well, remember how they evaluated our Classes when we got here? We are F-Rank because we are useless in stopping the Calamity, which is a prophesied apocalypse caused by Errata. Baking cakes for them or lying to them is not going to make a difference. We can’t fight them.”

That’s right, Theora was a [Baker]. She wondered if she could still defeat these Errata, though. Running from them would feel bad if they could harm other people instead.

Lostina sighed. “So, back to our problems: We’ve got no money. No travelling resources either. We’d need, what… Stuff to put up camp, food, water… So, first, we need money.”

“Money,” Theora repeated. How did one find money? In a world like this, that was not easy to come by, right? She was vaguely aware that some people would work in exchange for money. Also, fighting for entertainment was a popular thing in stories too, as far as she was aware. “So, we find… work? Or… fight in a colosseum?”

Lostina raised an eyebrow. “If that’s your idea on how to earn money… you do you. I have something else in mind.”

“What will you do?”

“Hm… Like. Personal question.” She looked at the orange juice in front of Theora, still untouched. “Are you a goody-two-shoes?”

“What does that mean…?”

Lostina shrugged. “Like, are you a good person?”

“No.”

Lostina winced. “Ah, right. Forgot about that. Sorry. I’m just getting the vibe that if I tell you what I’m up to, you’ll try to stop me. So, let me just try on my own for now. Oh, also. Fight clubs would pay nice if you’d win, but you’re a fucking Level 1 [Baker]. You’re gonna die. Again.”

Theora blinked. “I think I might be able to hold my ground,” she murmured, which seemed to displease Lostina greatly.

“Listen, honey. This is a scary world. You’ve kinda proven already that you’re a naive little thing, getting killed off like that within seconds by the guards. Don’t underestimate stuff, you hear me? Would be a fucking waste if I had to do all this alone after all.”

Theora gulped. Lostina was right. She was in a completely different world now; and who knew? Maybe the strength she had in reality was just normal for a gladiator here. It was a power fantasy after all. Perhaps they’d wipe the floor with her. 

“Alright,” Theora went, a bit discouraged. “So… we split up?”

“Yeah. Let’s meet up again at seven tonight, at the western clock tower. Should be easy to find, and people would be able to give you directions. It’s at the edge of town, so we’ll be able to travel overnight. Sound good?”

Theora nodded, and with that, Lostina got up and vanished into the crowd outside.

With a sigh, Theora stared at the glass. It would be thrown away, right? She did not have money, so instead, she left a bundle of high quality dried basil from her cloak. She’d smelled that used in the kitchen. Then, she drank the orange juice, and left.

The main road was still buzzing. Theora could see Lostina graciously weaselling her way upwards through the crowd. So fast… She’d never be able to keep up with that.

Watching the girl disappear, Theora started to ponder.

What exactly was she supposed to do now? She had about seven hours to gather money. She could go into a bakery and ask if she could help out… But right now, her only Skill was [Knead] and she had no clue whether she’d actually be of help. In fact, even if she did find work that way, would the wage be enough to fund the travel expenses?

Food, tents, survival equipment… Theora wouldn’t be able to knead her way to that within a few hours. With a sigh, she contemplated other options. Getting herself killed off in a fight club was a last ditch solution, but even then, it seemed a little brute. She didn’t actually want to fight people, it had just been her first thought when thinking about a dystopia.

Ultimately, Lostina and Theora wanted to get to that village to prevent something bad from happening. In other words, her journey was important. So… she felt like there was only one proper avenue to take here.

She walked through the streets until they thinned out, and eventually found herself in a district with large white residential buildings. Without hesitation, she knocked on the first door she could find.

Nobody answered.

It took about three more attempts at other houses, until she made it to a mansion with a bit of green garden fenced off to its front. It was a well-kempt spot with little flowers arranged neatly and in bloom. The path was paved with the same bright white limestone-like material the entire city seemed to be made of, and after ascending a few steps, she knocked on a birchwood door.

She was greeted by an old, tanned person wearing a black suit, thin and round glasses, and white gloves. He pushed his glasses back upon seeing her, his face showing some type of disgust at the sight of the dried blood on her cloak.

“Hello,” Theora started. “I am on a mission to save a village from a bad fate. But I require resources to reach it. I wanted to ask if you were willing to share some funds.”

He frowned in confusion, then slammed the door shut.

Theora blinked.

Maybe he was having a bad day… Still, she couldn’t remember the last time someone outright refused her pleas for help in this manner. With a soft sigh, she went on to the next door, and then the next, and then the next.

And fared none the better.

Most didn’t open their doors, and those who did barely listened to her, and those who listened had nothing to share. Sometimes, she’d be met with disdain. One person called her a ‘beggar’ but sounded as if that was a bad thing.

At first, it simply puzzled her. But as the hours progressed, she became rather annoyed.

This made no sense. She’d knocked on how many doors now? She’d gained a silver coin in total, which, judging from some prices on the market, was barely enough for a meal. Better than nothing, and so she was thankful, but overall, it was rather vexing.

She started pouting soon after.

Yes, this was a story. Of course, she understood that. In stories, some things didn’t work out the way they did in reality, but still, this was getting ridiculous. She started to sympathise with Lostina’s annoyance with the author… After asking so many people, none of them were willing to help? That wasn’t a believable way to build a world. It seemed to be this way simply because the author had decided for it to be so, and not because it was in any way realistic. 

Eventually, she ran out of time, and had to ask for directions to get to the meeting point. This felt so bad. 

The clock tower was a little hard to reach, albeit easy to see from afar, and so she arrived about ten minutes late. The streets had thinned over the course of the day, and this was a small plaza on the edge of town. Lots of benches to sit on, arranged in circles, with a few patches of grass amidst the white paving.

Someone waved at her, sitting at the fringe of a dark alley, seemingly busy with System prompts, judging from her staring at invisible things. Blonde, long hair, green eyes. She was in a good mood. Several large sacks lay next to her on the bench, and from the way they were shaped, Theora had the vague worry that they contained nothing but coins.

“Oh, there you are!” the girl said, smiling, and waving. “So, what’s your haul? Oh, in case you didn’t notice, it’s me. Ignore the disguise.”

Theora stared at the ground as she approached, and then produced her silver coin, and a bronze coin she’d found lying on the ground somewhere.

Lostina snorted. “Looks like an honest day of work as a baker. Hope you managed to get some Levels at least, it might prove useful if you can make stuff that gives us buffs later on.”

Theora looked to the side.

“Oh, don’t worry. I’ve got enough for the both of us. Today worked out splendidly.”

“Is all of that… all money…?”

Lostina nodded. “Yep! And I got a ton of Levels, too. Was pretty fun, not gonna lie.”

“How did you…”

“Hm?” She raised her eyebrows and then shrugged. “Why, I scammed some rich nobles, obviously. I’m a [Pretender], I have to lie or I won’t get any stronger.”

Theora wished to cry.

“It’s easy,” Lostina continued. “Just have them believe it’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, and that you’re only in town today, and have twenty other high-profile people to get to, and really, you were just knocking on that door because of the pretty plant they had in their window, so they are extremely lucky to even get noticed by you. And then…”

Theora tuned out.

So this world was set up so you had to scam rich people in order to succeed? It was unrealistic to have rich people to begin with… Why would they be rich instead of sharing their wealth with people in need…

She gave another small sigh, and reminded herself that this was just a story. Someone was having their fun making up the very worst society imaginable, and it was Theora’s fault for even having chosen this book in the first place.

“See, your sad puppy eyes tell me it was a good thing we split up,” Lostina added, and her gaze turned a bit firmer. “I’m gonna be honest with you. I’m here to save Gonell. I don’t care about the rest of the world this shitty author dreamt up. In other words, I’m a bit of a villain. Can’t have you interfere with my plans.”

“I would not have interfered,” Theora murmured. “I would have just been unhappy.”

At that, Lostina’s expression changed into pity. “Aww, aren’t you a cutie. Sorry.”

Theora gave a weak shrug, and let her shoulders hang. Lostina blinked through the crowd, and as Theora’s gaze followed, she could see some guards talking to each other.

“Anyway, let’s go,” Lostina said. “People are probably already searching for me. The disguise should help, but who knows.”

With that, she gave Theora two of the larger bags to carry, and they made off towards the gate.