Might as Well - Chapter 391 - Interlude 39.2 (Patreon)

Miriam, or Miri to her friends, the few that were still alive, enjoyed the small things in life that she still could get her decaying body to appreciate. In her nineties, she wasn’t the oldest person, as life expectancy had continued to rise with advances in technology. Especially if one was willing to embrace machines and cybernetic enhancements.

Miriam had a few things in her body, making sure that her heart continued to tick and that her liver didn’t give up the ghost, but otherwise, her small body was all her mama gave her. Sadly, she couldn’t really shake it anymore.

Still, it was strong enough to hug her grandchildren and even great-grandchildren whenever they got lost and showed up at her door. She couldn’t really blame them. She was an old woman, and they were living the high life in a future she couldn’t have imagined when she was a little girl watching all those science fiction movies.

Still, her decaying body didn’t stop her mind.

Miriam was very proud that even her doctors were surprised by how intact her cognition was. They routinely told her it was like her body was ninety years old, while her brain was around fifty. She mostly smiled and told them it was healthy living and good genetics (which wasn’t exactly a lie, as her descendants were rather blessed in that department), but she knew exactly why that was.

Finishing her morning ritual and breakfast, she put the dishes into the dishwasher, patted it gently, then slowly shuffled toward her room. She could have walked normally, but she had recently discovered that the slippers she got for Christmas were especially nice to slide across her floor in.

So, taking enjoyment from the small joys of life, she entered the room and stood for a moment, observing the greatest thing she had ever created, aside from her marriage, children, and that one Christmas dish seventy years ago while super high.

Near the door was a small whiteboard with pictures of vegetables, meals, and other ingredients, along with random lists written around them, some crossed out and some ticked off. She had been working on recreating that dish ever since then, and Miriam could feel it, she was close!

But today was not experimentation day. Instead, today was for something much more important.

Walking forward, she beheld her… Station of Doom and Fluffiness.

Six forty-nine-inch monitors stacked in two rows, arranged to seem like one seamless surface, with several machines to the side powering everything and making sure nothing burned out. The best mechanical keyboard, in white and pink, sat in the middle, with several smaller controller boards, audio controllers, and a stand holding fluffy white headphones with pink cat ears on the top that she had modded to listen for and watch whether somebody was behind her.

The chair was a bespoke ergonomic masterpiece molded to her body, decorated with adorable pictures of her favorite characters. It was also sinfully soft while providing proper lumbar support.

It even had a massage function. A footrest under her desk also doubled as a foot massager whenever she needed it.

Everywhere else, the entire room lit up with RGB lights as she stepped inside. It was a bit old-school, but it reminded her of her youth, so she kept it. Plus, with a bit of programming, it made watching movies amazing.

In another corner of the room was a gaming pod for Magic Unbound. It was one of those upgraded ones with medical devices attached, as it helped relieve her aching joints.

Micro-motors aimed at her joints made sure none of the usual gunk settled there and kept her limber and moving by keeping it mobile. The massage function made sure that her muscles got at least some workout without chancing breaking her fragile bones.

Miriam went to her favorite chair in the world, plopped down, put the headphones on her head, took the cup from the cup holder, and held it under the spigot that led directly to the kitchen, letting a bit of cool sparkling water flow into it.

She took a good, long sip, put the cup down, stretched her fingers, and then it was time.

The monitors flared to life, and her fingers flew over the keyboard as she checked the news, her favorite sites, her feed, checked up on her enemies, at least the ones still alive, made sure her family was happy, sent a few likes and whatnot to her great-grandchildren’s posts, then turned her attention toward one of the greatest games she had ever played.

Miriam couldn’t help but grin and cackle as she read the news. The war was getting hotter and hotter. She couldn’t wait for the inevitable explosions!

Especially because she hoped she would be responsible for most of the explosions.

After all, it was art!

Her cheating ex found out what she could do with a bit of flour and a sparkler, but in the game she had access to magic and alchemy, and to a guild that took one look at her notes and just smiled and told her, “Go nuts, our enemies are that way.”

She had known true love, but the day they told her that felt almost as transcendental as the day her dearly departed husband told her she had the greatest ass. Damn right! She never missed an ass day at the gym!

Finishing with the boring stuff, she set up a few processes to collect information, then started a program that calculated volumes and quantities for her experiments, stood up, stretched, and with a small grin on her face left her headphones behind, music briefly filling the room before the automatic system detected their removal and turned the music off.

She moved to the gaming pod and began the process of entering the game.

“This would have been much easier if I was twenty years younger…” Miriam grumbled as she started attaching the cables.

Still, all this annoying stuff was totally worth it.

Ten minutes later, the loading screen vanished, and she felt her body turn light as a feather, the ravages of age becoming a distant memory as her laboratory materialized around her.

As was customary, she threw her head back and let out a well-practiced cackle, the noise echoing around the lab.

“I’m back bitches! HAHAHA!”

Outside of her lab, she could hear several people yelp and curse.

“Damn, BB is back!”

“Everybody hide your experiments!”

“Where is the stabilizer?”

Voices continued to cry out behind the door, but she didn’t care. Instead, she turned toward her main bench, ran a finger, covered in smooth, beautiful skin, along the rows of bottles and began to mutter as she scanned the many containers filled with different liquids, all of them either gently sizzling, bubbling, letting out steam, glowing with radiation, or filled with fractal-like crystals that appeared and disappeared every second.

“Which one should I choose?” she sang before stopping at the only normal-looking liquid. It was white and looked like tepid milk. “Oh my~”

She gently picked it up and scanned it.

[Alchemical Solution #1391211: Currently stable, awaiting primer.]

Basic, but it told her everything. A new creation she had made after randomly remembering an old meme.

She giggled as she remembered the meme. “Well, MILK, today we’re going to have fun! Just you and me!”

MILK, or as it was known in her notes, stood for Metallic Impulse Liquid Katalyst. So it didn’t really make sense, but she wanted to use the name, so she didn’t care too much.

Putting the experimental explosive into her alchemical belt stretched across her chest, she adjusted the dress she was wearing, half mad scientist getup and half sundress, showcasing the goods she couldn’t anymore in real life.

With a grin, she walked toward the door and called out.

“Here I coooome!”

***

“Can we now do something?”

“He is still not cheating.”

“But…”

“No.”

“But…” he impotently gestured toward the screen where Cynthia’s full-body wireframe was turning around with data scrolling around it.

Several people around them pretended they didn’t hear him whine pitifully. “But that was supposed to be our ten-year anniversary expansion. We agreed! Dragons! And now he’s undone all that work…”

Selene smiled. “Technically, there is only one dragon.”

“And with that, people are going to figure out it’s possible to change race. It’s going to be bedlam!” he exclaimed, pointing at the AI’s projection.

Selene hummed. “Projections show that with the safeties the Fucker put in place, barring any unexpected circumstances, it would take at least three months for the news to filter out to the public. Bigger guilds would notice within two weeks, but our numbers say a month at most,” she explained, the data she was using showing up on the screens for everyone to see, with further projections added for those who needed them.

He crossed his arms in front of him, desperately wishing for a pillow to scream into. “That’s not enough. We’re already overwhelmed with the whole magi-tech thing going on. If we have to also moderate, administer, and oversee race changes, a lot of people are going to burn out. Even with AI help, it’s going to be a shitshow...”

The AI in front of him nodded. “I understand, sir, I really do. But the basic tenet of the game is absolute freedom to do whatever they want. We can’t blame them for building castles in the sandbox we gave them.”

The man grumbled but waited for Selene to continue.

She smiled. “The Fucker is currently focused on the war with the Blood Army, which means a lot of other people are also focused on it. With a bit of tweaking, we can make sure to extend those few weeks of secrecy to at least the end of the war, wherever that may happen.”

He perked up. “Tweaks?” His eyes then narrowed as if remembering something. “Is this again about your vampires?”

Selene harrumphed. “My vampires are perfectly alright, thank you very much.”

“This is about your vampires…” he half stated, half asked.

Selene just smiled. “If you’d allow me to tweak a few things here and there, we could make sure nobody pays attention to a girl with a weird body.”

The man closed his eyes and took a deep breath, while visibly and silently counting back from ten.

After finishing, he opened them and stared at the AI, who was looking back at him with a hopeful smile. However, before he could open his mouth, Selene continued hastily.

“And having one person beta-test our race change system is also pretty good from a PR viewpoint. The target is pretty healthy, with only a few psychological issues, so we can see how a baseline human handles alternate body proportions and related issues. One is not a sample size, but it would allow us to further refine the process,” she told him.

“Plus, our target is pretty close to the Fucker, so we can expect further deviation from the expected process. If we allow them to continue, we can catch them before they reach the public, and we can just pretend it was always like that.”

He couldn’t help but nod at that. “That does sound nice… For once we wouldn’t need to scramble…”

“See?” Selene perked up. “It would be totally useful!”

“But why do we need vampires for that?” he asked as he reached for his tablet and began scrolling through it while he listened to the AI sputter out excuses.

He scrolled through the data on the tablet before nodding and waving over one of the many people watching the exchange. The other person hurried over.

“Yes, sir?”

“Go and set up a team to observe the target… let’s call her Fucker-Lite. I want them making sure she is okay, both physically and psychologically.”

“Yes, sir. Observation for the person of interest, codename Cyan. Anything else?” the other person repeated back, completely ignoring his naming sense.

“Yes,” he replied, ignoring the other person’s ignoring. “Start upgrading our dragon expansion based on what you can observe from Fucker-Lite. If the Fucker gives us more work, the best thing we can do is make money off of it.”

“Yes, sir!” the other person nodded and rushed away, already calling somebody.

He turned to the rest of the room.

“Alright, people!” he clapped his hands. “Let’s start by cleaning up. I want to make sure Fucker-Lite doesn’t suffer any malfunction in her defenses. I want to keep the secrecy for as long as possible.” People began to scramble as he continued. “And somebody find Fucker-Lite a quest she can vanish into for a few years.”

The scrambling intensified.

He turned back to Selene and let out a grunt as he dropped into the nearest chair and picked up a cup on the desk that wasn’t his, but he hoped it contained pure alcohol. Taking a sip, he was disappointed to find that it was lukewarm coffee.

“Let’s talk about your vampires…”

“You’re not going to regret this!”

“I already do…”

***

The game was great.

They had started it recently, getting almost the entire class together to make sure they had the perfect party composition. They even talked about setting up a guild with all of them. She didn’t think it would work, as the boys always talked about joining one of the bigger guilds to become as powerful as possible, but she hoped she would manage to convince them.

Still, they were having fun, and they had recently left behind their beginner village, finally joining the real game.

It was a bit overwhelming, and they had lost a few people in the process. Some went to crafting guilds, some simply left without saying goodbye, and some were actually recruited by the big guilds.

She was proud of them, but it still hurt to see their group dwindle down.

Soldiering forward, they spent a bit of time learning new skills, picking up quests and tasks, making sure to follow all the guides, and then headed out into the wilderness as one. Safety in numbers, plus they were experimenting with party composition, and it was much easier with so many people.

They rushed through the quests, which were too easy thanks to the guides.

Thanks to how the game worked, no quest was exactly the same, except for a select few, but there were only so many ways a gathering quest could go, so there were many guides on how to complete the several types of basic quests.

Their group arrived at a small border town, far away from the hotspots. With the war going on, the Emerald Kingdom was dangerous to traverse, but they still needed to level up, so she simply looked up the most up-to-date maps showing territories and conflict heatmaps and determined where there was the least amount of conflict and the smallest area where the two territories clashed.

It was this small border town, that was so small it was simply called Border Town.

The people, that is, the NPCs, living here lived mostly from hunting and selling the results to the few merchants who visited them. Occasionally, an adventurer would show up, but they would always move on.

The fact that her group stayed longer than it took to use a toilet surprised the people living in the town, but they were also very happy. They had a lot of things they needed adventurers to take care of. Anything from searching for a missing hunter’s body to checking out ominous ruins someone’s grandfather had found.

To most guilds, this location was nothing.

But for them, it was a gold mine.

So they held a quick meeting and decided to put down roots for a while.

The NPCs celebrated, and they began doing quests.

It was a few days after they settled in when something happened.

It was a normal day. They were preparing to head out to check out some spot inside the forest that one of the NPCs claimed was haunted when somebody heard a whistling noise.

Following his gaze, they all looked up, seeing a red projectile flying high through the sky.

And then even higher.

She narrowed her eyes. “Where is it going to land?”

“Here…” came a matter of fact reply from one of their archers. They had the skills to determine projectile’s flight path.

The projectile flew higher and higher before it stopped, hanging there as if gravity had no effect on it. Which was fair, because they were playing a fantasy game where magic did weird shit regularly.

Then came a distant boom, and the lone projectile exploded into countless smaller projectiles, blanketing the morning sky with red rain.

Her eyes widened.

“Run!”

It was too late.

The rain slammed into the ground, both around the town and inside it. Every projectile, as soon as it hit something solid, exploded into a dome of swirling black and red, swallowing everything in its path and leaving nothing behind but puddles of strange materials.

She managed to run for a moment, dodging explosions amid the cries of pain and suffering, but in the end she wasn’t fast enough, and one of the domes of swirling mana swallowed her left hand when she dodged too late.

That slowed her down enough that she couldn’t dodge the next one.

The screen went blank.

[You have died.]

That day, many towns on the border between the Emerald Kingdom and the Blood Army territory suffered attacks, wiping them off the face of the planet.

It signaled to the public that the war had truly started.

And nowhere was safe.

A/N: I have no idea where Miriam came from. But she is a badass!