Misadventures Incorporated

My third life, I spawned as a hippopotamus. I was a drug dealer's pet. My owner was a loser obsessed with his public image. He often redistributed his ill-gotten wealth among the poor even though it was from them that he sourced it to begin with.

Those who pointed out his hypocrisy were brutally killed, often with explosive devices.

I was made to dance to his tune and entertain his guests. Narcotics were often a key part of the occasion, both for his visitors, and yours truly.

Perhaps I might have been able to escape had the normal conditions persisted.

But on that world, the system was too lacking in influence.

Though I carried out a number of executions on my master's behalf, never once did I proceed toward the divine throne.

___

Lana spun around in front of a tall, Cadrian-sized mirror as she double-checked her dress. The sparkly purple outfit was completely different from the cottontail-styled garment that had accompanied her last few soirées. The silken fabrics were made up of many more layers than most Cadrian regalia, and as far as technicalities went, it wasn't even a dress at all. The top and the bottom were split by a thin line that revealed the area around her stomach. That part was covered instead by her shawl and her knee-length bonnet. Though not quite functional enough to completely hide her features, it fulfilled its traditional purpose—it would have been impossible to pick out which sister she was had they both donned the garb.

"I wish I could show Tessa." She had already told her sister about the dress through their tail-based code, but it just wasn't the same as having her see it in person. Thankfully, it wouldn't be too long until their reunion—Tessa was arriving the very next day.

Such clothing was not typically available in Cadria; she had to get it custom made at one of the local shops. Though it wasn't in fashion, Lana was far more partial to her new outfit, and not only on account of its familiarity.

She wasn't keen on the fact that most Cadrian choices leaned towards showing off one's fur. That wasn't to say that she was strictly against such outfits. They were awfully pretty, after all, but she just didn't see the point in wearing them when one wasn't in heat.

Checking the robes one last time, Lana walked out into the communal living room. She was the fifth to complete her preparations. Ironically, it was the men who were last. They were still unaccustomed to powdering their faces or otherwise applying the products worn by the other partygoers. Chloe was supposed to help them, but she was too busy laughing at their failed attempts. When she finally calmed down, it only took a few seconds to wrap everything up and get the two men presentable.

From there, they were off to the races.

They warped to the other side of the castle's grounds and spent the night alongside the enemies they would soon have to fight.

Lana did all her usual things. She greeted a few familiar faces, sampled every dish with Sylvia, and then walked out onto the balcony without bothering to dance.

She didn't really see the point. It wasn't fun; she didn't really see why anyone would enjoy moving around at a specific snail's pace whilst in the embrace of someone besides a lover. And more importantly, the waiters were unlikely to bring her any snacks if she was on or near the dance floor.

The tiny, bipedal wolf looked towards the sky as she happily accepted one such offering—a softshelled crab baked into a delicious puff pastry—and twisted her lips into a frown. It felt like she was wasting her time. The party's mages had made plenty of progress in the last few days, while she had effectively made none. She was still stuck in the same rut as ever. That was why she was still the weakest among them, despite being the closest to a thousand among the thrice-ascended.

"That is quite the long face."

Turning towards the source of the sound, she found a high elf. Despite having several ascensions under his belt, the man had aged to the point that all his hair was grey. His figure, however, was much closer to that of a warrior in his prime. His back was perfectly straight, his shoulders were a Lana and a Tessa wide, and his muscles were so massive that they threatened to burst from the threads of his poorly tailored suit.

Her opponent.

The outfit was not quite the same one he'd worn to the qualifiers, but it was made in the same dinky style and perhaps even artificially aged for a more dated look.

"Hello," she said.

"Good evening." He extended a hand covered in a glove. Its white material was only just thin enough to obscure his overly pale skin. "It's good to finally meet you, Miss Penhorn. I'm Graham of Marinus, Old Marinus specifically, and I do believe we'll be meeting in the ring in just under two day's time."

Lana readily accepted the handshake. She doubted he was up to anything. He didn't smell like danger.

"Nice to meet you," she said.

"I was just hoping we could have a little bit of a chat before our duel." The way he smiled was oddly offputting. His moustache almost seemed too stiff for how much he moved his lips.

"About what?"

"To be honest, I didn't quite think that far," he said, with a chuckle. "I just thought it'd be nice to get to know you."

Lana blinked. "I'm not interested. And I wouldn't be. Even if I was in heat."

"That's not exactly what I meant," said Graham, with a cough. "I just wanted to know more about the person I'd be fighting, purely from an educational standpoint."

"Oh." She paused for a second. "I'm Lana. I like boats."

The elf threw back his head and laughed. "I gathered that from your whole Pirate Queen title. Unless Vel'khan has sky pirates?"

"Only sea ones." She turned her eyes to the hundreds of flying forts dotting the skyline. "Does Cadria have sky ones?"

"There was a very brief period, around seven hundred years ago, where they were fairly prevalent, but that trend ended about as quickly as it started."

"What happened?"

"It just wasn't all that practical. Battleships are a little too obvious to miss and they can't outrun high-level fighters."

"It's the same in the water," said Lana. "People can see you from underwater cities, and sea ships are even slower."

"That's a good point," he said, as he played with his chin. "How have you managed to stay afloat?"

"We have our tricks."

Laughing, Graham grabbed a drink from a nearby waiter and downed it in half a breath. "So? Why are you fighting?"

"Because I can," said Lana.

"Does that mean you're the type that just likes the thrill?" The elf's pointy ears twitched.

Lana shook her head. "Not everyone can fight. So those who can should."

"That's not quite the attitude I expected from a pirate queen," he said, with a frown. "But thank you, Lana, that was very insightful." He set his drink on the railing and put his hands behind his back. "To be honest, I was hoping that you would be more of a villain. It would've been easier to take you down if you were. But make no mistake, that does not mean that I will be pulling my punches. I will win our bout."

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Lana met the old elf's gaze, her own eyes alight and brimming with strength. Perhaps, if she wasn't still munching on a pastry, it might have made for an intimidating stare.

"I won't let you."

"I wouldn't have it any other way." Graham bowed. "Now, you'll have to excuse me. I've an appointment with an old friend. Thank you again for taking the time to speak with me. I hope you have a wonderful evening."

Lana nodded. And then, after grabbing three mini beef wellingtons from a nearby waiter, turned her eyes skyward once more.

Again, the thought crossed her mind.

She was wasting her time. There was only a day and a half until she had to fight—a day and a half left for her to crawl her way out of her rut.

Briefly looking back at the party with a frown, the myraen climbed over the railing and hopped down into the castle's garden. She wasn't exactly familiar with the palace's layout. It was so ridiculously confusing that it may as well have been impossible to navigate, but it only took using her nose and following her own scent to eventually find her way back up to the room. Though even then, she had to navigate using the building's exterior and enter through a window. The interior space was far too convoluted.

She retrieved her moon-blessed axe, entered the annex, and stood in the middle of the gymnasium with the weapon in her hands.

Everything was perfectly still.

Her breath was steady.

Her feet were steady.

Even the world was steady.

And that was exactly the problem.

Lana had spent most of her life aboard a ship. She was accustomed to fighting on water, standing atop a boat where her footing was unsteady. She was used to taking careful, delicate steps even midcombat so as to avoid putting holes in the fragile wooden floor. And she was used to tilting the world with every stomp.

The waves were supposed to provide constant openings. They had always forced her enemies to adjust their balance on the fly. It was precisely in those tiny tweaks that she found her success. Lana was far more adept than others when it came to reading the waves and rebalancing her body. And by looking for things that others forgot, she could create the openings she needed to fight or retreat from an otherwise impossible situation.

On land, she had no such trickery at her disposal. Nothing worked the way that she wanted, and though all her training, over the last year, had certainly left an impression and greatly improved her abilities, she was still much weaker grounded than she was in the water.

It was a fault that she had known from the very beginning. It was the reason behind her singular magic-adjacent class and the reason that she had worked towards crafting a domain in which she could pull her enemies. That particular plan, however, had hit another brick wall. She was never able to flesh out the realm she created or even become proficient enough at magecraft for it to pull others within. Its ideal form would've been something like a fleet of ghost ships in the midst of a violent storm. Or failing that, a ship graveyard filled with half-rotting timber.

Lana briefly puffed up her cheeks before returning her focus to her weapon.

There were two ways forward. She could either somehow master her domain spell in time for the competition, or she could magically find a way to fight better on land. Practically speaking, both options were impossible in the little time that she had remaining, but that didn't mean she wasn't about to try.

She likely would have preferred the more magical choice had Allegra any more time on her hands, but without any extra aid, Lana decided to focus on the latter instead. Closing her eyes, she imagined an opponent standing in front of her. She knew that she was to fight the old elven man, but the foe that she pictured couldn't have been any more different.

When she opened her eyes again, she found a monster halfway between a centipede and a crab. He was the king of the orniferins—the hurdle that she had never surmounted.

"I get what you're thinking, but that'll take way too long."

"Panda?"

"The one and only."

The familiar voice prompted Lana to scan the room, but she was unable to locate the speaker; there were no raccoons anywhere to be found.

"Don't bother looking. I'm talking directly into your head," said Panda.

"You can do that?"

"Yeah, since I tamed you, but that's not really important right now," he said. "The long and short of it is that I've got a solution to your problem. A chance to make a buck, if you will."

"You do?"

"Yeah, though it's admittedly a little unorthodox. It might even mess you up real bad. Up to you if you want to roll the dice."

Lana paused. Her first thought was to refuse him. Panda was a bit of a psycho and anything that he claimed to be risky was surely too stupid to be worth her time, but she cut off her refusal when she returned her gaze to the weapon in her hands. It was a beautiful, single-edged axe made entirely of moonstone. The material wasn't just bright, it quite literally glowed in her hands, emitting a constant bright light that made it more difficult for her opponent to scrutinize her angle of approach. The godblessed weapon was nearly indestructible, but in the odd case that it suffered any damage, it would immediately restore itself to perfect condition. Even more promising were the axe's additional properties. It could freely modulate its weight in response to her demands and would leave a mark for every blow struck. Those marks in turn could be activated, either for a heavy burst of damage or a powerful enhancement.

Frankly, she was undeserving. The Illustrious Evernight Cleaver was a true divine relic—the type of weapon meant to be conferred upon a divine champion, not a filthy sea urchin that feigned virtue by redistributing the wealth she robbed.

"Okay. Let me try."

"That's the spirit."

The voice in her head laughed as the world went dark. A strange, tingling sensation spread through her body, followed by a strange, unsettling feeling that she couldn't quite explain.

When her vision returned, she was in the middle of a forest. At first, she thought that she was back in Fornestead—everything was oversized enough that she felt like she was tiny. Because, frankly, she was. That much was made obvious by the droplets that hung from the leaves. In the land of the giants, they alone were normal sized as demanded by the laws of physics. But in her surroundings, they were scaled proportionally to the rest of the world. Just, she was so small that even one could drown her.

Looking around, she found that it wasn't just the scale of the world that was wrong. Her body felt strange. Her face was incredibly low to the floor and her head didn't want to turn without the rest of her body. It was almost like she didn't have a neck.

"What happened?" she asked. For some odd reason, her voice was scratchy, clacky, and inexplicably masculine.

"I'll explain, but only if you promise not to tell Claire," said Panda. "Last thing I need is her figuring this out."

Though confused, Lana eventually nodded. Or more accurately, bobbed her body up and down.

"Alright, where do I even start?" He paused for a second. "So, the way I'm understanding it, your biggest problem is that you learned to fight in the water, and everything's messing you up now that we're on dry land."

"That's right."

"In that case, all you need to do to get your profits back up is to retrain yourself from scratch. But this time, on land."

"What do you mean?" asked Lana, with a blink.

"Oh, it's simple, really." The grass in front of her rustled and a cockroach soon emerged from between the blades. Standing up on its hind legs, it lugged a shard of glass through the undergrowth and set it down in front of her. "I put your mind inside the body of a level three cockroach and messed with your soul a bit so you've pretty much got his stats."

"Excuse me?"

"You heard what I said." Panda smirked. "Oh, and by the way, your name is Doog now. Doog Schbag, specifically, and you're an irresponsible piece of shit, even for a cockroach. You've got a couple thousand children, three of which you've met, and two you've slept with. You owe so much in child support that a full payment could probably fund a city. And that's why you decided that you were going to become an adventurer. One or two solid rounds of spelunking, and you can pay off your debts."

Lana chittered. The scenario was almost as absurd as it was entirely pointless.

"So you're probably wondering, right about now: where the hell did the real Doog go?" Panda grinned. "Well, long story short, he's having the time of his life running around in your body."

"Swap us back."

"I'll think about it if you manage to complete your training."

"You'll think about it?"

Panda laughed. "Yeah, I mean, I don't actually know if it'll even work. This is the first time I've tried something so ridiculous."

"And you did it anyway?"

"Yeah. It was a total gamble," he said, with another laugh.

"Put me back."

"Anyway, here's the deal." He clasped his front legs together, as one would a pair of hands. "Your goal will be to ascend. Using Doog's body."

"In a day and a half?"

"Yup," he said. "I'm not letting you out of there until you do, no matter how long it takes."

"What?"

"Oh, and don't worry about dying," he said with a cackle. "I'll start you over in a fresh body every time you do. Naturally, that means you'll lose all your progress."

"What the fuck?"

"Hey, you asked for training. I'm just delivering," he said. "Oh, and by the way, since that's not actually your real body, the system isn't gonna be fully hooked up. Health regeneration is broken, even when you level, so you'll have to do the whole thing on a single health bar."

Clutching his sides and still cackling, Panda vanished into the bushes, leaving Lana in stunned silence.

It took a few seconds for her shock to turn to anger; she eventually clenched her cockroach fists and began to shake uncontrollably. Had a nearby goose not walked over and immediately consumed her, she surely would have started swearing like the sailor she was.