Lucky Rabbit

That night, Pandy practiced Spark until it reached level twenty, at which point she gained an extra two points of Intelligence, and one more point of Fire Affinity. She’d taken to casting the spell inside a tipped-over metal trashcan that she rolled under the bed, and the inside of the can was noticeably scorched. Her Spark grew slightly brighter and hotter with every level, but after level twenty, things changed drastically.

Pandy stared into the smoking recesses of the trash can, shivering with reaction after quickly dousing the Spark that had nearly melted the metal. Well, maybe it hadn’t been that bad, but the thin wall of the can had begun to glow red-hot almost immediately after the Spark flashed into life, though it had taken Pandy a moment to realize what was happening thanks to the increased brilliance of that light.

Pandy wondered. She didn’t expect an answer, but one came nonetheless.

Your spells get stronger with every level, but if you have the right Affinity, they’re easier to control.

Or at least they would be if you weren’t just shoving Mana into them and letting go.

Pandy jumped so high she hit her head against the slats beneath Thaniel’s mattress with a hollow thunk, and quickly healed the two points of damage she took, barely even noticing that she’d done so.

Who else would be talking to a rabbit at midnight?

This time there was a definite feeling of irritability accompanying the scrolling letters, and Pandy wondered if the god had become better at using the System to communicate, or if she was just paying more attention. she reminded him, managing to keep her own annoyance out of her inner voice.

…

No.

I feel like she’s close, but nothing I do convinces her to respond.

I even tried talking to a few of her priests.

That was really hard.

She should have been furious, and come to tell me off, but…

Nothing.

Gods weren’t allowed to talk to other gods’ followers? Or only their priests? Interesting, but irrelevant. she told him, though he probably knew.

…?

She answered the sense of curiosity by explaining her plan, but to her surprise, he wasn’t as enthusiastic as she was.

Are you sure it’s safe?

You should be fine, but the children…

She blinked. Keros was worried about the kids? Though she supposed that her saving a child had been enough to qualify her as a Hero according to his rules, so maybe she should have realized he would be. Though… She wasn’t sure if saying the name of Keros’ girlfriend would attract her attention the same way saying Keros’s name drew his, but better safe than stuck in a cramped space with a busty goddess and a smoking trash can.

We didn’t argue!

…

I just said I’m not ready for a family yet.

And we were just on a break.

If I didn’t care about children, it wouldn’t matter if I would be a good father.

I could just agree and make Aglaea happy, then ignore them.

Plenty of gods do.

Oh. That…made sense, and was actually kind of sweet.

Not…exactly.

But we were talking about you.

I don’t think you should-

If things did go wrong, Augustus would probably never speak to her again. And definitely fire her. Even if she wasn’t technically working for him. She knew the chancellor well enough by now that she was actually pretty surprised he still allowed her around his students. The fact that she never intended to get them into trouble, and somehow always managed to get them out of it, must be going a long way toward soothing his righteous fury. Or maybe Isidor hadn’t told him about the Third Floor Incident? That…actually seemed more likely.

Augustus?

If disembodied letters could perk up, these did. She felt her ears grow hot, and not just because the container in front of her was still glowing ever so slightly red.

I know who he is.

…

If he agrees to this, I suppose I’ll allow it.

How was Keros going to stop her? Though, actually, it was probably best to bury that thought very, very deeply, so the literal god in her head didn’t feel compelled to prove his strength to her. Quickly, she thought,

What about it?

she said apologetically, flattening her ears behind her head. Hopefully, he wouldn’t take this the wrong way. Though she wasn’t sure what the right way would be, since she was totally insulting his work.

I made it just like your game!

No. No he had not. It had the bare bones of Gacha Love, in the skill and stat names, and the way everything worked, but it was about as user friendly as a toaster you had to turn on by sticking a fork in it.

Focusing as hard as she could, Pandy pictured the User Interface of Gacha Love. In the upper left-hand corner of the screen was a head-shot of Clara, with a red bar representing her Health, and a blue bar representing her Stamina. Once she had elementals, their Stamina bars sat beneath Clara’s, with each elemental represented by a different color.

In the upper right corner was Clara’s current balance of gold. Below that, all down the right side of the screen, were icons representing Inventory, available elementals, skills, and equipment. When the player entered a dungeon, an additional bar appeared across the bottom with icons for spells and skills, which could be set up just before entering the dungeon. If another character was with Clara – usually one or more of the love interests – their image would appear in the bottom left corner. The player could either choose to allow the game AI to run them, or control them personally, but that decision, too, had to be made before entering the dungeon.

she admitted with some reluctance,

Do you want little pictures floating around in your vision all the time?

That seems kind of…

Distracting.

Oh. Pandy hadn’t really thought about it that way, but Keros was right. If the world looked like a video game interface all the time, it wouldn’t seem like real life. She’d constantly be watching her Life Force or Mana, rather than just checking them when she really needed to. How would she actually feel if she was talking to Thaniel or…or Augustus, and there were icons floating in front of them? That would be way worse than an occasional line of text. A lot of the time she didn’t even remember this was the Gacha Love world anymore, and was able to just live her completely normal life as an undead rabbit.

she said with a sigh, settling down with her chin on her paws.

Silence fell, and Pandy had the distinct feeling that Keros was doing the mental equivalent of digging into unlabelled boxes he’d found in the back of his attic. Finally, he wrote back.

I don’t know.

Ag-

Aggie did something to Radiant Presence, and I can’t tell what it is.

I don’t even see Shield of Darkness here at all.

There’s Ƨhield of ŁįƌĦŧ.

Is that it?

she told him, pointing to the fading text with a claw.

That one says it’s supposed to create a protective sphere of ŁįƌĦŧ around a subject, which will absorb up to ten percent of the user’s health in damage, and has a small chance of dealing an equal amount of damage to any Dark elementals who get close.

That was almost right, though Pandy remembered the description talking about Dark or Undead creatures, rather than Dark elementals. Had it changed because she now knew that Demons were elementals? But why didn’t it include undead anymore? Maybe there were no undead in this world, and even Keros’ magic wouldn’t force them into being? Except Pandy herself was undead…wasn’t she?

Once again, Pandy was left with more questions than answers, but she was pretty sure Keros couldn’t help, god or not.

It uses your own magic.

It’s right there in the name.

She paused, thinking about that, then added, More silence answered her, and Keros answered, she could sense his confusion.

You’re right.

There isn’t.

Maybe what you’re using as Innate Magic comes from the character you’re playing?

If you’d incarnated into the role of a human, you would have used their power.

Pandy asked, practically wailing. She’d been struggling not to think about this too hard, but everyone kept asking her who and what she was, and she just didn’t know. Didn’t know, and, even more, didn’t like any of the possibilities that came to mind. Like the idea that she actually was a Demon, but one Lian couldn’t Purify for some reason. One who might have had something to do with Thaniel’s death in the original story.

Your character name is just Pandora.

I’m sorry.

I don’t know what happened.

I made a mistake.

A lot of mistakes.

This time both of them were silent, as Pandy processed this. Had he apologized before? She didn’t think so. He’d made excuses, and blamed her at least as much as himself. With a soundless sigh, she let it go.

Yes?

Even the letters were smaller, as if coming face to face with and having to admit to his own failures had deflated him.

Pandy didn’t want to be the cause of someone else’s death or erasure. Especially not someone who would have been completely innocent in all of this. It haunted her that her selfish choice might have deprived some stranger of their own life. In that way, becoming an undead rabbit was the best thing that could have happened, even if she might possibly have ejected a Demon from the position in the process.

Of course not!

My magic would have copied everything about someone else and put you in their place.

They’d just…move over.

So the previous maid or guard or shopkeeper might have filled a different position, or worked in their parent’s store.

They’d still be alive, and the same person in every other way.

They just wouldn’t remember that they’d ever been a maid or whatever.

They and everyone else would remember you in that role instead.

Which wouldn’t have been so bad, other than the fact that Pandy didn’t really know how to cook. She certainly couldn’t make towering souffles or stuff a pheasant.

Exactly.

You should have taken the place of someone close enough to the original story that you could watch, or even participate.

You’d be surprised how often Heroes ask for something like that.

It takes a lot of magic, though.

Easier to just drop them in a new world and leave them to fend for themselves.

That didn’t sound like much of a reward for heroism to her, but it was probably better than just re-entering the cycle of souls, or whatever it was. Probably.

she told him.

Keros didn’t answer, and after a while, she felt the sense of his presence fade. Apparently he was done talking, and that was all right. She had been able to get a little more information – though not much, given that she’d been talking to a literal god – but more, she was glad to know that her existence wouldn’t have hurt anyone. If she had taken the place of Clara’s maid, that maid would have been fine, too, just lived out her life as a tailor or something instead.

Not that any of that mattered, since Pandy had instead incarnated in the character of maybe-probably-but-maybe-not-a-Demon who was supposed to affect the game in some way, and Pandy could only think of one Demon who fit that description: Ascyra, the Demon Queen who had turned Lian Dark, helped him murder a really excessive number of people, and then unleashed a demonic horde. Of course, she could also be an anonymous member of said demonic horde, but given Pandy’s luck and the involvement with Killian’s family, Pandy doubted it.

No, she was definitely the ultimate villain of Gacha Love. And the real Ascyra was out there somewhere, living a slightly different life, but still just as powerful and evil.