They were all awakened the morning by a brisk knock that preceded the entrance of three storage chests, which were apparently floating in midair. These stacked themselves neatly in the middle of the room, and Timon had just enough time to adjust his clothing and try to look tired before Mistress Rose entered.

  She checked on Thaniel with perhaps a bit too much efficiency before instructing Timon to fetch the boy some breakfast and then unpack his things. Thus food had been brought – though Pandy only got Thaniel’s unwanted sad – and a clock had appeared. Timon had done a surprisingly neat job of filling Thaniel’s wardrobe, too, so he didn’t seem to be irretrievably zy, just unwilling to do more than necessary.

  Thaniel spent the day in bed, but by the time lunch came and went, it was obvious to Pandy at least that he had fully recovered. In spite of Timon’s best efforts, the boy whined constantly about wanting to get up, especially after finding out that Eleanor had asked after him. Timon finally left the room after warning Thaniel to stay in bed, was gone for about fifteen minutes, and returned with an Eleanor who was barely recognizable as the same child who had originally met Thaniel and Geraldine.

  This Eleanor – or rather Ellie – had light brown hair that had just enough curl to be frizzy. Her eyes were an indeterminate hazel, and her clothing was quite simir to Geraldine’s, in that it was covered in ce and fripperies, but not made of visibly expensive fabric. She smiled nervously at Thaniel as Timon peered down the hall outside the room.

  Turning back to the children, Timon said, “Now, I’m going to go for a bit, and you two are going to keep it down, or we’ll all be in trouble.” He pointed at Thaniel. “And Mistress Rose says you’re to stay in bed until supper, so you’d better do that. I’ll be back at six.” With that, he left, closing the door behind him with a firm click. The hall carpet muffled his footsteps, so both children waited tensely to see if he would reappear before they burst into speech at the same time.

  “Thaniel, you’ll never believe-”

  “Ellie, what happened-”

  Then they stopped, grinned at each other, and Ellie said, “Your room is on the corner, too, which puts it right above mine!” She pointed straight down, then tapped the toe of her little green boot on the floor.

  Thaniel’s jaw dropped, then he grinned again, only wider. “We can make up our own code to communicate through tapping!” he said. “Just like Wayward Pirate Pete and First Mate Scrubs when they were captured by Really Evil Pirate Drake!”

  Eleanor blinked, then giggled. “I was going to suggest something simir, but I didn’t know Pete did it, too. Who’s First Mate Scrubs?”

  Thaniel unched into the tale of how Wayward Pirate Pete met the monkey who would eventually become First Mate Scrubs, and soon the two children were chatting and giggling as if they’d known each other for years.

  Pandy, who was back under the bed after Thaniel accidentally crushed her for the fifteenth time while thrashing around – the good news was that she hadn’t had to hurt herself in order to practice Minor Heal – returned to what she’d been doing for the st day.

  Name: Pandy

  Race: Rabbit? (Deceased)

  Age: 24

  LF: 1/1

  Mana: 2/13

  Stats

  Strength: 3 Intelligence: 12 Agility: 15

  Skills

  Hop: Lv.15 (45.5%) Bite: Lv. 9 (88.88%) Scratch: Lv. 9 (88.88%) Minor Heal: Lv. 13 (64.8%) Wings of Glory: Lv.1

  Boons

  Ismara’s Blessing I

  Corruption Points: 89

  She’d gotten quite a bit better at controlling Bite and Scratch, and could now inflict only a single LF of damage most of the time. That, in turn, took only one Mana to heal, which meant she could use Bite or Scratch as soon as her Mana regenerated, which took exactly five minutes per point, at least according to the clock that now sat on Thaniel’s small bedside table. She could, of course, have simply used her nonexistent LF to cast Minor Heal instead, but not only wouldn’t that allow her to work on Bite and Scratch at the same time, she was also a little afraid she’d goo too far and Thaniel would have to put her back together again.

  Above Pandy’s head, the bed creaked as Thaniel moved over so Ellie could teach him how to py a card game that sounded a bit like Go Fish but with an elemental twist. Pandy id her chin on her paws and drew in a deep breath. It was time to go for it, and see what these two skills had in store for her. Would she get something good, or would they simply continue to level up, and probably grow more powerful? She didn’t really need to be able to chomp through concrete, though. No, she needed stats. Would she get them?

  Catching just enough of her cheek between her back mors, Pandy bit down.

  Bite successful. 11.11% experience gained towards next level.

  Bite is now level 10. +1 to Strength.

  Oh yes! That was almost as good as finally getting a 100 Grand bar after months without chocote or caramel. Pandy’s Strength was now four, and while that might not seem like much, it would add up quickly, especially if Scratch also gave her Strength.

  She healed herself, then quickly Scratched her paw.

  Scratch successful. 11.11% experience gained towards next level.

  Scratch is now level 10. +1 to Pain Tolerance.

  Pain Tolerance? Pain Tolerance? Since when was that even a stat? Why was that a stat? Who wanted to be able to tolerate pain well? Yes, all right, she did, but the stat came with a definite implication that there would be a lot more pain to resist in the future, and Pandy definitely didn’t like that idea at all. Or had this happened because she had intentionally hurt herself to reach this level? Was the System mocking her?

  Pulling up her stats again, Pandy saw that she did indeed have a Pain Tolerance stat, and that it now sat at a whopping one. Had it been there all the time, and she just couldn’t see it because it was zero? What other stats could be hiding in her character sheet, ready to pop out just when she needed something else?

  If Pandy had had opposable thumbs, she would have been pulling out her fur, but the best she could do was gnaw on it instead. Why? Why hadn’t she gotten more Strength? With two skills adding to a single stat, she could have become the Schwanold Artzenneger of rabbits in just a few weeks. But no, now she would have to get Bite to level seventeen just to reach a Strength of ten. Which was, presumably, barely average for a human being. If her many years of pying video games had taught her anything, it was that average was never good enough.

  Pandy wrapped her paws over her ears and rolled on the ground in a paroxysm of frustration. She wanted to scream at that stupid god for getting her into this mess. In fact, why shouldn’t she scream at that stupid god? What had he really done to make up for this? He’d promised to help her, and so far, he hadn’t even bothered to make an appearance.

  She looked up, then left and right, as if trying to figure out where a god might be lurking, finally clearing her throat with a little squeak as she thought, Nothing, so she tried again, this time with a little more feeling. This time she got a vague feeling that someone had gnced her way, so she channeled all of her frustration into the loudest yell she’d ever yelled.

  The space beneath the bed was suddenly much more Occupied than it had been a moment before. The god tried to move, only to find that he was firmly stuck between the wooden floorboards and the bedframe, and only rolled his head over so he could gre at her. He was noticeably more filled-out than the st time she saw him, but less buff than when they first met, which was probably a good thing, because his pecs would have lifted the whole bed off the floor.

  “What now?” he demanded peevishly. “I was just about to send oatmeal and asphodel to Agea. She’s been working on this big-”

  “Oatmeal?” Pandy asked, then blinked, startled to hear herself speaking again. She gnced up, but apparently the children couldn’t hear either her or the god, because Thaniel was still compining that Eleanor was taking all of the best cards.

  The god shrugged, his chest rubbing against the underside of the bed, wrinkling his toga. “She likes oatmeal. Especially groats. She does this thing with fruit and honey-”

  Pandy spped a paw over his mouth, and he stopped, looking shocked. “I don’t really care,” Pandy said. “What is this?” She called up her stats and pointed at the line for Pain Tolerance.

  “Pain Tolerance?” he said. “I mean, it probably means that when you get hurt it doesn’t. Hurt, I mean. Or it hurts less.”

  She desperately resisted the urge to Bite him. She was already being fairly disrespectful, frankly, and even though he was really annoying, he was a god. Or at least god-adjacent. “Yes, I know that. Why is it there?”

  “You want to feel pain?” he asked, then tried to wave his hands. “I mean, it’s cool if you do, you know. Different strokes for different folks. Or what have you. But most people would be happy to hurt less.”

  Pandy drew her breath in through her nose. “Yes,” she said slowly, “I’m very gd that painful things will be less painful, but I need Strength. I need anything and everything that will help me keep Thaniel safe, and you said you would help me, but instead, you’ve been off plying your ex-girlfriend with whole grains and peacocks!”

  Now he did look offended. “Lay off with the ‘ex’ business! We weren’t even officially on a break. And yes, the peacocks were a mistake. Did you know those things scream like they’re being murdered? Constantly? Next time, I’m definitely going with something that looks and sounds good.”

  “Like a Scarlet Tanager? I did a project on those in sixth grade, and- Hey!” Pandy realized she’d been pulled off-topic again. She tried once more, speaking slowly and clearly this time. “You promised to help me. You have not helped me. I want you to help me.”

  “Oh,” the god said. “How, um, can I do that?”

  Now she gred at him. “You’re the god. You tell me!”

  He reached up and scratched his head, twisting awkwardly to do so. A single strand of golden hair fell toward the ground, vanishing into a faint shimmer before it touched wood. He’d gotten a haircut at some point, because what had once been a luscious, flowing mane was now a tidy hairdo that probably concealed his expanding forehead better when he wasn’t lying ft on his back.

  “Technically, I’m already doing more than I should,” he admitted. “Once we deliver you to your new life, it’s supposed to be hands off. Yes, sometimes one of us will pop back in for a little chat with someone, but there’s definitely no helping.”

  “But you promised you would,” Pandy reminded him again. “Unless you want me to use the gach-”

  “No! No, ah, of course I remember. It’s just that this is, you know, your game. Don’t you know everything already? I even made you a thingy – System – like the one in the game.” He tilted his head toward the patiently hovering stat screen.

  “And it’s a terrible System,” Pandy said bluntly. “I had no idea I was going to get this Pain Tolerance thing, or I would have just focused on Bite, and I’d have another point in Strength by now. I don’t know how much CP anything costs until I try it, and I don’t know what other stats or skills are even avaible.”

  “Sure you do,” the god said, looking confused. “I just put in the same things that are in the game. I mean, that’s what the magic was supposed to do, anyway.”

  “Then this,” Pandy poked a cw at the state screen, “is all back-door, or, um, back-end, or…anyway, it’s programming that the pyer never sees, because Gacha Love used Stamina, and of these, only Minor Heal and Wings of Glory were avaible as spells.”

  He scratched his head again, and a few fkes of dandruff followed the fallen hair. “Oh. So, um, you…don’t want these, uh, stats anymore? Because I’m pretty sure if I get rid of the System I’ll get at least some of my magic back. In fact, that sounds like a great idea. I’ll just-”

  Pandy lunged for him before he could say another word, spping both paws over his mouth this time. “No! No, that’s the only chance I have of keeping Thaniel safe! If I was stuck at this point, or, worse, lost all of my skills, there’s no way I’d be able to protect him! Did you know a gargoyle fell off the roof of the Reedsley’s house and nearly crushed him? They don’t even have gargoyles! If I hadn’t tripped him, he’d have been smooshed.” She shuddered at the memory.

  When she removed her paws, the god looked distinctly peevish, and she wondered if she’d finally gone too far. He was such an idiot, it was easy to forget he was a god. Or something.

  “Then what do you want me to do?” he asked, lower lip just starting to protrude. “You sound like Agea. ‘Do this’, ‘do that’, ‘no, not that way!’”

  Once again, Pandy questioned Agea’s choices, but she said, “Can you tell me what the different skills and spells are, and how much they’ll cost? I assume I have to use Corruption Points to buy them in the first pce, but how many?”

  His face went bnk. “Corruption Points? What are those?” He squinted at the bottom of her stat screen. “And how do you have eighty-nine of them?”

  Pandy opened and closed her mouth, then realized she probably looked like a fuzzy goldfish and spoke as calmly as possible. “They’re what I use to cast spells and use skills when I’m not near a character…I mean, a person or pce that was in the game.”

  The god frowned. “Uh, no. I’d definitely know if that was possible. My magic lingers around those people and pces, which is why you can use magic there. I had to find some way to spread one year’s worth of power out over four years instead. But why would you want to get that far away from them, anyway? I mean, this is your game. Your dream life!”

  “First of all,” Pandy said, “this isn’t my dream life. I just didn’t want to become a professional sock-sorter or something in my next life. Do you know how many shades of bck there are? Second of all – or is it secondly? – I can definitely use CP to do things away from Thaniel.”

  He stared at her, and then they were suddenly elsewhere. It was a nice elsewhere, with a pleasant breeze and some flowers that looked a bit like very rge dandelions nestled among the lush green grass, but Pandy felt an immediate urge to go back to Thaniel’s room, where she could see him. Before she could say so, however, the god spoke.

  “Do something.”

  She stared at him. “What?”

  He tugged at his toga with one hand, pulling it over an expanse of thigh that Pandy couldn’t unsee, while his other hand made a swirling motion. “Use one of your skills.” Somehow, the stat screen had followed them, and he motioned to it.

  She wished she had an eyebrow to raise at him, but spoke as she usually would to the System. She immediately hurtled into the air, leaping up and over the god, though her back paws might have dangled just enough to mess up his hair. Completely on accident, of course.

  Hop successful. 1.82% experience gained towards next level.

  He didn’t even seem to notice, turning to gape at her with a dumbstruck expression on his face. “That. You can’t- I didn’t even feel a pull on my magic!”

  At that, her satisfaction at proving him wrong faded away entirely. “Whose magic am I using, then?”