here, there, back again

Not long after, Mariko’s eyes snap open.

She's on stone slick with blood; eyes burning, tongue dry, and a sickly warmth pressed against her shoulder. She sits up slowly, shoving aside what turns out to be a half-charred leg. Lovely. 

The stickiness on her face is also, almost certainly, blood.

This feels too familiar.

The cavernous, ragged cave: familiar. The robed figure, holding its staff against her, array glowing: familiar. Both as an immediate burst of adrenaline at the base of her spine, but also superimposed over it, as text on a screen read in the darkness of her room:

It was only after Mire’s pretenses had fallen away that her ruse was revealed: she was not a priestess, but a powerful dark sorceress that had killed a Sentinel at the checkpoint and taken on its identity.

She closes her eyes. This couldn’t be happening.

If modern publishing was a sea of effluvia, then there was that one standout worse than any other, isekai. She's maybe one of the worst candidates for the affliction. Isn’t this a condition saved expressly for teenage boys with unfulfilled desires, not respectable, tax-paying members of the Japanese public?

And into Tower of Beasts? It was objectively shit!

She spits blood out of her mouth.

“Lady Mire, please remain stationary. You are currently subject to a stat penalty. Resistance will result in enforcement escalation.”

Ah.

So this really was happening.

In Tower of Beasts, Mire Seravelle was set up to be the dark counterpart of the angelic childhood friend character that accompanied Rion up the tower, a powerful if slightly stupid magician whose betrayal in the later chapters had made Mariko yawn. Mariko’s theory was that she was modeled after someone who rejected the author in high school; Mire had the ugliest personality, the worst ideas, and the gruesomest death.

But she was a powerhouse in her own right. She had navigated those tricky situations where Rion needed a powerful magician on his party, performing magic over and over at his behest.

(Which in itself was baffling, because why would she need Rion anyway? All the other nobles were too weak and needed him to tank hits for them before they stabbed him in the back, a tried-and-tested strategy that couldn’t go wrong (except when it did, catastrophically, when Rion came back in the second loop and gravely, sweetly, redeemed them). Mire also used the authority of her rich family to buy equipment and favors for the party, which seemed like a terrible idea as well. Mariko had dismissed it as lazy romance writing at the time, an excuse that tastes bitter in her mouth now that she's in this idiot girl's body.)

She flicks through the memories of her body. Standard stuff, growing up rich, training hard, being kind of a bitch about it. Climbing the tower with ease even without a party, because Mire's parents had loaded her up with so much equipment and supplies that she literally didn't need help. 

But then, on Floor 11, instead of killing the Sentinel and assuming its identity, this stupid girl had, what? Died? And now Mariko was in charge of steering this shitshow?

The grim lot of her life suddenly gets grimmer as she reflects on what’s coming: in a few chapters, Rion will save her from a monstrous something or another. It’s a fateful encounter that leads to her either joining his party to betray him later, or falling in love with him, depending on which loop this was. In the first run-through, she had been ingloriously killed by some monster of the tower, and redeemed via cheat skill the second. She’s staring down the barrel of the most predictable plot arc either way. If only she hadn’t got bored of Mire and her one-dimensional villainess schtick, she could have at least remembered what kink she pandered to.

What kind of fanservice was she in charge of, anyway?

She’s knocked with the sudden and incredible urge to take off her shoes.

No. No way.

“Kill me,” she rasps to the Sentinel. “I’m foot fetish girl. Just kill me now.”

The cold inhuman visage of the Sentinel doesn’t change; it’s humanoid, but the robes and the fucked-up lighting within the cavern obscure the features. When it raises its staff again, she can see that there’s a cloth tied over where its eyes should be.

She hopes she gets reincarnated as a rock in a bubbling stream next time.

Except nothing’s ever that easy: the magic bounces around her so it hits the wall of the cavern instead. A few seconds of silence follow before a deep rumble rocks the cavern, the reverberations making the rocks crumble and fall.

A scaled, multi-legged monster climbs out of the rubble, one leg after another until all its limbs are poised less than ten feet away from Mire, and roars again.

Jesus. She’d assumed most of these monsters were metaphorical, but no: this big guy’s huge and he looks hungry.

She stays very still. If it’s blind, or can’t see humans very well–

The beast roars again, and charges right at her. For something its size it’s frighteningly fast.

She finds a dagger at her waist and ducks in. The monster’s many legs come swishing down on her and she slashes at it out of instinct. It’s strong; something in the way her dagger creaks makes her think it’s not going to hold for many more of those.

But, even more surprisingly: so is she.

Mire slashes again and is shocked to find that the knife cuts through the air like butter: she never worked out in her past life, so the flex of her biceps is unexpected. Pleasing.

“Inadvisable,” the Sentinel says. Is that emotion in its voice? Why does it sound pissed? “Blasphemed Familiars exhibit Tier III resistance to magical attacks. As Sorcerer-class, you possess insufficient penetration capability.”

Right. Of course. How could she forget? This was the worst story ever written, of course there was this caveat.

Born a Paladin, Rion couldn’t exceed his stat levels, making his charisma low. He watched as charming noblemen and women made allegiances and called in favors and wondered what it would be like, even for just a day, to be loved just for existing.

Cringe.

Why had she even read this book? A ham-fisted and confused analogy for overcoming the circumstances of one’s birth, immediately overridden by his cheat skill that let him max out all his stats anyway. The regression plot twist really was the equivalent of throwing a child’s finger painting in an industrial grade paper shredder.

“Speak for yourself,” Mire snaps, annoyed. “I’m strong as hell.”

As the spider-thing lurches from the gloom, its bulk sways like a drowned cadaver unmoored from the riverbed. Moonlight—or what passes for it, in the Tower’s sourceless haze—catches the wet sheen of its mottled flesh: waxy and pale, except where it’s been ruptured. From its misshapen carapace juts a ribcage that isn’t its own. Something humanoid is fused into its spine, the twisted remnants of a torso dangling limply beneath its jaw. Its scream is less a roar than a choir of gurgles, like it’s choking on all the lives it failed to finish off.

Mire doesn’t flinch. She rolls into the attack.

She giggles. It bubbles up, wild and startled, because her limbs are so light. Every twitch of muscle translates instantly into motion—no drag, no hesitation. The movement is so precise it makes her giddy. She hadn’t realized how heavy she’d always been. How clumsy. Now, she feels like a creature made for violence.

“Let’s see what sorcerer classes can actually do,” she murmurs.

The spider-thing stumbles as it turns, dragging three shattered legs behind it. Someone had hacked it up before, and the wounds are puckered, stitched badly with something black and brittle. A set of old manacles dangle from one limb. One of its eyes is crusted over with something crystalline, as if it had been crying salt.

It rears up, exposing a ruined underbelly—pale, veined, and pocked with teeth marks. More fused limbs twitch beneath the belly plates, still faintly human. Fingers. Toes. A necklace is embedded in the meat.

It opens its maw. Fire swells in the belly.

There it is, Mariko thinks. Coals churn red-hot between its ribs, banked fire building and building. It's going to attack soon, and if she times it just right, if she’s perfect—

There's something standing in its path. 

Of course. That fucking Sentinel. It’s still in the way, like some kind of suicidal idiot. No survival skills looking ass–

“Fucking move!” she yells, already too late.

She launches herself anyway—too fast, too close. The spider begins to exhale fire and her hand clenches into a fist involuntarily and she punches it in the throat, full force. 

Her flesh sizzles instantly, but the chitin is cracking like porcelain, crumbling under her -ha!- Sorcerer's fist. The beast thrashes, screeching, the fire choking back down its own windpipe. She drives her fist deeper, because if she half-asses this she’s worse than dead. Even as her skin chars and the muscle screams.

Her other hand draws the dagger and she starts sawing.

It takes forever. Blood sprays black and oily. She hops on the thing, using her weight to steer it away from the shitty Sentinel as it bucks and rears. Her eyes sting from the smoke, but she can’t keep a big, manic grin from splitting her face.

“Sorcerers can’t breach its armor my ass!” she yells down at the Sentinel, who is frozen, staring up at her. Now that she’s atop the massive bulk of the monster light filters through enough for her to see that the Sentinel truly is human– dressed in deep crimson robes with filigree details, a muscle jumping in his jaw as he watches her wrestle this creature to the ground.

She drives the blade between plates and rips it sideways.

The spider-thing collapses with a crack like a tree splitting. Its death is not sudden—it gurgles, spasms, and slowly folds over itself. Something inside it keeps twitching. It smells like roasted fungus and seawater. Mire stares, panting.

Around the clearing, remnants of what it once was litter the moss: a child’s boot, splintered shackles, a broken toy sword carved of bone. There’s a mural etched into the stone wall behind it—half-crumbled, mostly scratched out—but Mire makes out the shape of a crowned figure cradling something that looks suspiciously like the spider’s earlier form, less monstrous.

The ping comes just as she’s stepping back, viscera dripping from her arm like melted wax.

A cheerful chime. Glowing text:

[You have defeated: Blasphemed Familiar – Lv. 10!]
[Magical Proficiency has leveled up! +1 MP]
Class restriction in effect: Stat growth reallocated to nearest viable pool.
Please proceed to the next floor. -5% XP gain for non-class-aligned actions. Restrictions may be–

She stops reading. Some writers just didn’t have the knack for brevity.

“You’ve breached your stat cap,” and the Sentinel sounds furious now, putting any doubt that he’s human to rest. “Disciplinary intervention will be performed if further unauthorized divergence from assigned class is observed.”

She blinks. Her impression from on top of the spider hadn’t been wrong; despite his intimidating bulk, this was just some guy. The book hadn’t gone into too much detail about the Sentinels, besides the fact that they were built to enforce the Tower’s ruleset when the Tower couldn’t, semi-autonomous extensions of the Tower. A group of them had rocked Rion’s shit in his first loop when he tried to breach a trap to save the dewy-eyed maiden of the week.

As far as the story went, Sentinels were pretty standard-fare NPCs. There hadn't been any illustrations for them, so Mariko's a little surprised that this one looks pretty cool: dressed in dark, ornate robes with the hood pulled down to hide his face, under which he wore pretty standard adventuring gear. The only other notable accessory was the black blindfold tied over his eyes.

Overall, kind of powerful-looking. The kind of person you'd want to owe you a favor.

She crosses her arms. 

“I saved your life? Shouldn’t you be on your knees in gratitude?”

A sneer. Not only was this definitely a man, but it was one with a really shitty attitude. “I’d like to remind you that you resisted my enforcement of the rules and tried to kill me, Lady Mire. As a Sentinel, that is grounds for your immediate termination.”

Mariko chooses to ignore this.

“If you care about rules so much isn’t it against the rules that I got hurt protecting a Sentinel?”

To his credit he looks horrified when she raises her hand: charred and still slightly steaming, the veins a mess of reddened skin. He takes a step forward before he visibly makes himself stop.

“It is outside my purview, Lady Mire. I am not permitted to heal climbers of the tower. You must ask your party healer to do it.”

The bitter, white-hot pain of her hand pairs well with his idiocy, like wine and chocolate. “Do you see a party healer anywhere, you absolute dipshit.”

“Then I suggest you join a party that has one.”

“Fine. Fine. Join my party.”

He scowls. “I respectfully decline.”

She considers this: considers, then, the dark spots that are clouding her vision. She’s going to pass out soon, and then what? Lie around till the next party showed up?

What if the next party was Rion’s?

The thought stills the pump of blood in her heart. What if her only option to save her life was to join Rion’s harem?

No. There’s no way. Absolutely not.

She pushes her feet to the ground. Centers herself on the pain, the visceral, never-ending burn of it. She hadn’t read every single one of those shitty novels cover-to-cover for nothing.

Post-regression, Rion had had no trouble recruiting members to his party. He had it all: a powerful mage and a strong healer, and a reputation for being the strongest climber in the tower. But still, there were a few who resisted him: notably, a MILF-type that refused to join his party to protect him.

For those precious few he deployed Mire, with her dark magic, and her binding spells.

Half-delirious from blood loss, Mirako points at the Sentinel. 

“On this floor, Floor Eleven of the Tower,” she says, hair lifting as dark, creeping tendrils creep forth from the ground, blocking the priest as he lunges towards her with a snarl, “I invoke your life debt and bind you to me, Mire Seravelle of House Seravelle.” Then: “Stop being a baby and just accept the binding, god,” as the Sentinel glares at her. The binding magic snakes around him longingly, until he breathes it in with a glare.

Marks inscribe themselves in itchy strokes across both their wrists: a snake biting a lion. Nice. Subtle.

He looks—beyond furious. Some emotion that leaks past the clammed-tight mask of his face, something so vicious she almost regrets it. His jaw is locked, and his blindfold doesn't dampen the weight and sizzle of his glare. It's almost enough to make her regret it.

Almost.

As it is, she grins. If he hates it so much, he should have killed her when he had the chance.

She has something clever to say curled in the tip of her tongue– smart and acerbic, something to really put this hot priest in his place– but then, shame of shames, she staggers.

She has maybe lost more blood than she’d intended.

The Sentinel mutters something that sounds very un-NPC-like when she crashes into him. She hisses; his hands are gentle, but cool, an icy-sharp coldness that feels like menthol. He’s bigger than she’s fully comfortable with, solid. The kind of chest that a wayward villainess could really confess some wrongs into. Too bad he’s kind of a dick.

Trying not to focus on the bursts of icy-cold healing magic she looks around the cavern. Other than this awful buff Sentinel and the corpse of the beast she’d just slayed, there were bodies littered all across the ground; adventurers straight out of Lord of the Rings, elves and dwarves and –ugh– catgirls. Whatever thing she had killed, it had been no starter monster.

She tries to summon the text she’d seen before. Waving her arms only gets her an irritated tongue-click from the priest; blinking makes her feel even more light-headed. In the end she just kind of thinks about it and the text appears obligingly.

She reads the last part:

📋 System Note:
Class performance indicators remain outside optimal Sorcerer range.
Reclassification to Frontline Role denied. Continue operating under Support Tag.

“Support tag,” she mumbles. She pats the shitty sentinel’s face. “Wazzat.”

His jaw locks. “The tower judged you to be a support fighter and attributes your skill points accordingly. You need to show traits befitting a support class to progress.”

“And if I want to progress as a main?”

“What do you mean want, it’s an innate attribute the system judges for you.”

She rolls her eyes. “So the writing was even lazier than it seemed.”

“Excuse me?”

She ignores him, slipping her dagger back in its sheath. From far off, she can hear explosions: holy magic, the kind that only came from the strongest of fighters. She had no desire to hang around and run into Rion.

“How do I change my class?”

“I’m afraid you’ve misunderstood.” His voice tilts soft again, soft like a knife at the base of the spine. “Classes are determined by your innate abilities. A spread of stats is required to climb to the very top.”

“So what happens if I try?”

“You’ll fail.” His tone is light, almost bored. “Or the Tower will stop you from progressing.”

“Sounds shitty. And if I want to get out of the Tower entirely?”

“You could climb to the top of the tower and waste your wish on it.”

“That works!”

A deep, annoyed inhale. “Lady Mire, I can’t tell if you’re ignorant or optimistic, but stronger climbers have tried and failed.”

Sticks and stones, etc. etc. She ignores him as she lopes over to the floor exit, peering up at the perilously rickety stairs that spawn in front of her eyes. Behind her, the tower has begun to pulse under her feet, as slowly, in increments, the bodies that litter the floor begin to disappear.

“So if I climb to the top,” she says, “I get any wish?”

The look he gives her is almost murderous. It puts a chill at the base of her spine. This angry piece of shit, she thinks, almost affectionately. Was every NPC in this world so transparently mad at her?

“Of course, my lady.”

“Then let’s get on it,” she tentatively puts a step on the stairs; when it doesn’t explode underfoot she grins, and holds her hand out to her shitty sentinel. “It’s you and me, baby! We’re unstoppable!”