Chapter 14

At a certain point, I thought I was going to hit a limit. A limit on the weird. A limit on the impossible. A limit on the stupid.

Once, I had thought the ultimate height of absurd foolishness would be to die in an elevator that wouldn’t open because I was alone in an endless city that had been left abandoned for eons. Now, I was about to be butchered by a dwarf who hadn’t existed a few seconds ago, brought into existence by an errant thought ... and that was after the machine guns of the Locust beforehand, the armies of Zhon before that, the endless fleets of combat starships before that. While it seemed like each step down had been one factor less dangerous, each danger had become more personal, more focused.

The Dark Lord’s fleets had fired upon my fleets while I had sat back and commanded.

I had watched artillery land on a beach, close enough I could feel the heat of the explosions.

Then, the machine guns had been shooting above my head, bullets whining over my scalp as I cowered behind some chest high cover.

Now?

Gotrek Gurnisson, pulp adventure hero, thundered through the darkened forest behind me, his rune carved ax glittering in his hands. The runes that shone along the blade flickered brighter and brighter with every bounding step he took. While my legs were longer, I was tripping every few seconds and smacking into branches. Gotrek just plowed through the underbrush with a manic gleam in his one eye. I remembered, faintly, playing Total War: Warhammer and remembered being deeply amused by the Slayer unit of dwarfs. They had several positive ticks that let you understand how useful they were in combat.

Positive: Anti-Large. They were good at killing monsters.

Positive: Unbreakable. The Slayer Cult were dedicated to dying gloriously in battle, fighting said monsters.

Positive: Fast. For a Dwarf.

That had been funny, when the dwarfs were something you watched from a godly perspective in a massed battle you commanded. It was less funny when the little spiteful psychopath was chasing after you one dark, moonslit night. I panted and ducked under a branch, trying to think anything past my panicky oh shit oh shit oh shit. There was no sign of Gotrek’s less insane companion, Felix Jager, who ... now that I thought of it, had a hard time keeping the dwarf back when the two of them had needed to work with Ulrika after she had turned into a vampire. And Ulrika had been Felix’s lover for three books.

I was, to Felix’s eyes, a mutated beastman. I think explaining that I was actually a gnoll from D&D wouldn’t help much, since gnolls were usually evil there too.

Shit shit shit shit! I thought.

Then I burst from the forest and, for a moment, simply goggled at what I saw.

Ahead of me ... was the sun device. The massive, oblong egg of the sun sat right there, what looked like a scant few miles off. The spinning disk that surrounded it was hanging at the exact midpoint of the egg, which set it about fifty feet off the ground from what I could tell, since most of the lower half of the egg looked like it burrowed into the earth. The brownish red light of it cast shadows far and wide throughout the forest, and just looking at it made my fur prickle. My brain felt as jumbled as a box of legos tossed onto the floor...

And then I got it.

The waves that I rode through these psychoscapes, they created realities. But those realities were still giving me a path towards the sun device, towards whatever dark plan the Dark Lord had in the heart of the SOL system.

As I watched, the sun rippled. Another pulsing wave shot outwards, moving agonizingly slowly through the darkened forests of the Empire and towards me. I glanced back and realized, with a horrifying lurch, that Gotrek was right behind me. He leaped up and lifted his ax, bellowing a Khazalid war cry. I flung myself backwards at the last second, but I lost my tricorn hat. It hit the dirt and got bisected by the ax. I turned back to face Gotrek, trying to think, trying to focus through the terror. I had to get this right or else I was going to be in serious shit the second that reality distortion wave got near to me.

“Wait!” I exclaimed, holding up my hand.

Gotrek, to my surprise, actually did wait. I wondered if it was because the sheer, desperate panic in my voice reached him, or if it was because he had just seen the sun device, or if he had noticed that I didn’t have any weapons and, thus, was willing to hear me out.

I stood there, my throat working.

“Well?” Gotrek rumbled. “Get on with it!”

He really did sound like Brian Blessed.

Amazing.

Behind me, I heard the rippling sound of the distortion wave. I closed my eyes and focused, as hard as I could. I needed something I could handle – something I could get through that would still give me a chance to get close to the sun device and possibly destroy it. It needed a structured framework – but it also needed risk, danger. Something that the Dark Lord would see as a release valve for his or its defensive instinct. I wanted to channel that urge into something that wouldn’t kill me instantly, like a pile of Locust with machine guns, or a horde of orcs.

And I had it.

The reality wave hit me as I opened one eye. Gotrek and the forest shimmered and vanished. I wasn’t sure if he was obliterated – I hoped not, though, I wasn’t sure if Gotrek hoped not. He wanted to die gloriously in combat after all. But I was now standing in a broad sidewalk, wearing a nice looking, almost naval uniform. “Where are we?” A faintly familiar voice rang out. I turned around and saw the damnedest thing.

My girls were there. All of them. I didn’t see any sign of Lokken, Thirsha, El or Chrip, but I was sure they had been hauled along in the way of the reality wave. But rather than the normal array of cute elf girls – and one heavily modified biologically enhanced elf/bug hybrid in the case of Keke – I was looking at three incredibly bishonen Japanese school boys. You could spot Kanagoraga’s facial features and skin tone, or Alin’s eyes, and Keke actually still had cute little antennas, and Ara Ara had the same kind of glam accouterments that one might have expected from her, if she was forced to dress as a boy. But they were all boys. Kanagoraga put his hands onto his face, then yelped.

“What the fuck!?” He squeaked.

“Girls, uh, boys, sorry,” I said, holding up my hands. I was actually not a gnoll right now – my paws were gone, and I had no tail. I felt a fierce, sharp pang – but I forced it aside. “Sorry.”

“What did you do?” Alin asked, his voice soft as he patted at his chest.

“Well,” I said, putting my hands together. “I needed a gamic framework that allowed for progression, advancement and threats that might slow us down, so the Dark Lord would be forced into that context.” I lifted my chin and, despite lacking a tail, started trying to wag one. It was surprisingly hard to break the habit now that it had started. “We’re in a dating sim.”

The boys all blinked at me.

“Oh that’s clever!” Alin said.

“Why are we all boys!?” Kanagoraga spluttered. “I don’t want to be boys. Whose even the threat in a frigging dating sim!?”

I jerked my chin.

The former girls turned.

Emerging from the school, laughing and chatting with one another and giggling, were an array of the world’s most beautiful and adorable looking orc girls. Because of course they were orcs. This was still the Dark Lord were were talking about. There was the tall, skinny orc girl with glasses, whose bright emerald skin was contained within the same long skirted school uniform as the rest of them. There was a shorter, curvier looking girl whose uniform had an extra badge on it to announce to the world that she was part of some after school club or another. There was an athletic jock looking orc girl, whose Mohawk of orange hair was cut short and sporty. And there was a very curvy, very chubby looking orc girl snacking on a cookie and looking shyly excited at being a part of the friend group.

“That is our threat,” I said, nodding firmly. “We need to seduce our way through these orcs before the next reality wave hits. That will get us past the danger and into the range of the sun device, where we can hopefully disable it before the Dark Lord destroys the universe.”

My former girls looked back at me.

“That’s really-” Alin started.

“I can’t seduce an orc girl as a boy!” Kanagoraga spluttered, cutting him off. “That’s your job! You’re the boy expert!”

“I think you mean girl expert,” Keke whispered to him, antennas flicking in amusement.

“No, like, he’s the expert of being a boy!” Kanagoraga said.

“Kana,” I said, walking over, gripping his shoulder. “You can handle seducing some orcs. You’re already bishonen, so, you’re half the way there. You just need to remember, this isn’t normal seduction. This is a dating sim.” I paused. “Hopefully, not a very good dating sim, I did my best to focus on the lowest common demonstrator I could think of.”

“Wouldn’t you want to be in a good one?” Ara Ara asked, crossing his arms over his chest – a chest that was as sleek and flat as hers had once been round and juicy and bouncy.

“No,” I said. “Watch.”

I turned and hurried off. The boys, for lack of anything else to do, followed. Alin, at least, looked happy.

The high school remained a bustling throng of students heading too and from class. Right up until the trash bins off to the left side of the main school building exploded open and Gotrek burst out, his eyepatch still clinging to his head. Lacking a mirror, he had no way of seeing himself as he looked around the gaggle of high school students who were now goggling at him in shock.

“Manlings!” he grumped. Having pronounced his judgment on all, Gotrek swung himself free.

“Where did that beastman get too...”

He stumped off, eye swiveling left and right, ax glittering brilliantly red glowing red runes.

Then...

He felt his chin and shrieked.

Every rote dating sim had some kind of item shop. This one, I found, was run by El and Chirp. As I walked inside, I found the normal human looking CORE commander and her normal human looking harpy girlfriend were still getting used to their new surroundings, with El sitting at a computer behind the front desk and Chirp poking everything with her new fingers.

“Wow,” Chirp whispered, poking an exposed light bulb. “Ow!” She flung her hand out, wringing it from side to side as she hissed. “I thought it wasn’t fire.”

“It still gets hot,” El said, distractedly, while Chirp heard the bell chime of me and the boys walking in. Her eyes widened and she brightened.

“Hey Matt, Alin, Kanagoraga, Keke, Ara Ara!” she said.

“How did you know it was us?” Kanagoraga asked, his voice suspicious.