For Flint or Flint_
If you get this, I’m off back to Gloomspire Tomb.
Sorry for whatever junk I said. I got real drunk. Hungover like hell. Starving too.
Look, just forget whatever nonsense I ranted. It’s been a rough couple days.
Still signed in,
Gav.

—

---

<Keen Taste> is underrated. I’ve got a sense of… half taste, half smell, with my legs. I can tell a bit more about my environment, and I can taste bacon before it’s in my mouth. I am so glad the game dev’s included fry-ups in the tavern, I had to get double portions it was so good.

Yeah, double portions, don’t judge me. This body, Gabriella, I’m short, but there’s a lot of me, especially the big abdomen. It’s… not optimal to splash out on food, and definitely wasteful to have bought a room. Beds don’t really fit giant spider forms.

So, that said, I did some hunting on the way back to the tomb. Bagged- or, webbed- a couple of deer, and cocooned them as extra rations. It was after noon by the time I reached the entrance to GloomSpire tomb, to find my guard webs all cut up, and the newbies gone.

Please say they weren’t stupid.


—

---

They were stupid.

I found a swarm of respawned undead, including the zombified gunslinger and swarmkeeper, banging away at a locked door, aggroed by whoever inside. Once I shredded through them, and knocked on the door, lo and behold the third stooge, HotSingles69, <Seacubus Brigand> was camped inside. Surprising given her awful build.

“Wh- who’s there?! Is there an admin? A mod? I need help?!” Her sandy voice was panicked and raspy, bar on less than 10% HP. “You- spider lady what did you do!? Did you hack me?”

“Nope. Chill, go off and get a coffee, then get outta here.”

“I can’t.” She cried. Ugly tears for a beautiful face. Reddened eyes, quivering lips, runny nose. Too detailed, too real for the game engine.

“Oh.” I swallowed, “You can’t log out.”

“S-see, you KNEW?! YOU DID THIS! L-let me out, let me outta here! How else would you know!?”

“Cos I’m stuck here too.”

For some reason my eyes teared up too.

—

---

I hugged her. I didn’t know what to do. There’s supposed to be value in human contact, but we had maybe a third of a human in total between our weird hybrid characters. Crying turned to more crying. Then breathing. Then silence.

“What are you writing?” HotSingles69 eventually whispered.

“Notes. Might be useful,” I slowly released my embrace, feeling flushed, wiping my eyes. “Uh… you got a name? Besides that?”

“Oh, uh, call me Ellis. They/them, if… you’re writing about me. Thanks for… saving me, Gabby.”

Gabby? Oh, Gabriella. I let it slide, it wasn’t the time to nitpick. So, instead, I asked what had gone down. It was pretty obvious- I’d left them on low HP for shooting me and taken their better items, they’d decided to risk getting more, and all gone tomb raiding. The undead respawned, and Ellis freaked out from the pain of getting hit, ran and hid to log out, only to find themselves trapped.

On the flipside, I filled them in. We can get drunk. We need to eat and sleep. Our bodies are gone. We act out automatic commands, like inventory stuff, if selected. We’re probably not the only ones, there was some streamer wh-

“Gosh, yeah, I know. I’m nineteen, I’m know the meme.” They groaned, munching on some rations, “Any idea how to get out?”

“Would I be here if I had?”

“Dunno. Might enjoy having eight limbs. Ten limbs. …How do you handle that many?”

“Trial and error. Mainly error.” I went to draw my weapons, just to demonstrate, only to find my belt much lighter. And my bow was behind them. “Hey- you pickpocketed me!?”

“Woah, don’t be mad, sister. You did nick it first.” They shifted their tail- they’d grabbed the healing potion, food, bow, arrows, and mace, during the hug. “And it’s stronger now- well, my class gives me buffs with stolen gear, that’s what Brigand does.”

“Oh yeah? Well here’s what I do!” I snarled, and bit their tail. This kid did not just explain game mechanics to ME!

I mean, it was with the rejuvenating bite, so it healed them almost to full, but it scared them enough for me to grab all but the food back.

“Wha!?” They patted themselves, feeling the pain recede, no doubt, “The hell are you?”

I love explaining what the hell I am. They were eating, so I took my time, walked through the subclass, the species, the skills, the curse-respawning, my whole build. It doesn’t even sound like mansplaining with this voice.

“Ooooh, no wonder you’re crazy levelled. And what’s why we didn’t have any ghost problems? You ate all their respawns for the next fifty days, right?”

“Nah, you just can’t see them and got lucky… as for your build, what the hell were you going for?”

“Seduction. Mermaid charm. Succubus charm. Super gorgeous…”

“You came to the undead dungeon to seduce them and steal their weapons?” I groaned. Then looted the zombies. Then let them pickpocket a few weapons and items off me. Then patted myself down, counted my coins again, and bid the kid farewell.

“Uh- w-what? Shouldn’t we party up?!”

“I’m going into the next level down to farm more ghosts- high level ones. You wanna die, Ellis? You’re what, level three?”

“Two.” They admitted, shamefaced, fidgeting with their finned tail. “But… I wouldn’t get in the way, and if you turned on Mentor settings in the party, I could get an EXP share and get strong enough to return to town?”

Sharing is hard for me. Only child, no family, no kids. Splitting xp would mean I only levelled up twenty five times faster than normal….. Alright, that sounds petulant. And their logic was sound. It was life or death, I didn’t want them dying at weak low levels.

I didn’t know if the Gunslinger and Swarmkeeper had died, or just been players.

“Alright, what menu is that under?”

“I thought you were good at this game.” They teased. At least we weren’t crying.

---

This chapter went in so many directions before I streamlined it to this. Different characters, different locations, different levels, but eventually decided on the grand return of HotSingles69! The non binary Seacubus.