Su didn't stop running until she reached the old warehouse district, finding shelter in an abandoned mill.

  She set Fernando down, collapsed against a wall, and tried to process what had just happened.

  "Let's review. I broke into a vault, got trapped, met the Chancellor's pet monster. I assaulted said monster with a fern, escaped without stealing anything, and now the entire city knows something attacked the tax vault."

  "Don't forget the part where you activated a magical ward that locked the Chamberlain and four guards in their own vault," Fernando added helpfully.

  "Right. That too."

  "They're probably still trapped in there."

  "...Yeah."

  They sat in silence for a moment.

  "Did I accidentally do something good again?" Su asked weakly.

  "You locked up the Chamberlain, who is notoriously corrupt. And you prevented the Chancellor from getting the tax money he was probably going to embezzle. So yes. You accidentally struck a blow against systemic corruption."

  "I just... I just locked up a bunch of corrupt officials and escaped."

  "Yep."

  Su put her face in her wings. "Why. Why does this keep happening."

  A golden glow suddenly erupted in front of her. System notifications, more than she'd ever seen at once:

  QUEST COMPLETE: THE HUMBLE HEART

  OBJECTIVE: CONFRONT THE 'LORD OF THE WOOD' IN THE HEART OF THE WHISPERING WOODS.

  Wait, what?

  ANALYSIS: OBJECTIVE PARAMETERS MET THROUGH ALTERNATIVE INTERPRETATION.

  'LORD OF THE WOOD' = VERMILION PLUME (FALLEN SKY-DANCER, SHADOW-TAINTED)

  'HEART OF THE WHISPERING WOODS' = METAPHORICAL - THE CENTER OF CORRUPTION (TAX VAULT)

  'CONFRONT' = ACHIEVED VIA POTTED FERN ASSAULT

  THE SYSTEM RECOGNIZES CREATIVE PROBLEM-SOLVING.

  "You have GOT to be kidding me," Su whispered.

  REWARD: +2500 XP

  LEVEL UP

  LEVEL 12

  LEVEL 13

  LEVEL 14

  The XP surge hit her. She felt powerful in a way she hadn't since the dragon's canyon.

  TITLE UNLOCKED: 'THE TRIUMPHANT SPIRIT' TRIAL AVAILABLE

  SKILL EVOLUTION: ACOUSTIC TERRORISM → SONIC MANIPULATION (MASTER)

  You can now create complex sound constructs, including temporary barriers and phantom voices.

  NEW SKILL: SHADOW STEP (NOVICE)

  You can briefly move through shadows, traveling short distances instantaneously.

  TRAIT UNLOCKED: VOID-TOUCHED

  Your connection to dragon-corruption has stabilized. You can now channel void energy without destabilizing.

  Su stared at the notifications, her brain struggling to process.

  "I... I completed a Trial," she said slowly. "By throwing you at a dark peacock in a tax vault."

  "Congratulations," Fernando said dryly."Your life is a farce."

  "The system called it 'creative problem-solving.'"

  "The system is being generous."

  "I'M LEVEL FOURTEEN!" Su's voice climbed to a shriek. "I GAINED THREE LEVELS BY COMMITTING TAX FRAUD!"

  "You didn't actually defraud anyone. You just locked up the fraudsters."

  "THAT'S NOT THE POINT!"

  A sound from outside—shouting, guards searching the district.

  "We need to move," Fernando said. "They're doing a sweep."

  Su, still reeling from the level surge and the sheer absurdity of her life, picked up Fernando's pot.

  "Where do we even go?" she muttered."They're going to be looking for me everywhere."

  Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  "Then we go somewhere they won't look," Fernando said. "Somewhere obvious."

  "Like?"

  "The cathedral. People think you're a protective spirit now. They'll hide you."

  "I'm not a—wait, now? What do you mean 'now'?"

  "Oh, right. You've been too busy with your villain career to notice. People have been talking. About a shadow creature that punishes corrupt nobles. The rumors have been growing."

  Su went very still. "How big?"

  "Big enough that street kids are leaving you offerings on rooftops. Big enough that the Temple has started calling you a 'divine mystery.'"

  "But nobody's seen me!"

  "One kid saw you near the granary. A drunk dock worker saw you near Varris's mansion. A servant girl saw something with wings near the fountain system. The pieces are connecting."

  "But they don't know it's me specifically!"

  "No. They just know something is out there. Something that fights for them." Fernando's mental voice was, for once, not sarcastic. Just tired. "You're becoming a symbol, Su. Whether you want to be or not."

  Su looked down at her dull, speckled feathers. "I don't want to be a symbol," she said quietly. "I just wanted to be evil. It's exhausting."

  "Being a person usually is."

  They sat in the darkness of the abandoned mill, listening to guards search the streets outside.

  "If we go to the cathedral," Su said slowly, "that's accepting it. That's admitting I'm not a villain."

  "You were never going to be a villain," Fernando said. "You're too angry at actual villains to commit to the bit."

  "I threw you at someone's face."

  "That was self-defense. And also hilarious in retrospect."

  Despite everything, Su felt a laugh bubble up. It came out as a series of strained kra sounds.

  "Okay," she said finally. "Okay. We go to the cathedral. We lay low. And then... I don't know. I figure out what comes next."

  "That's the most reasonable thing you've said all week."

  "Don't get used to it."

  She picked up Fernando and headed for the window, using her new Shadow Step ability to slip through the darkness between buildings.

  Behind them, the search continued. But they were already gone, two shadows among many, heading for the one place that might offer sanctuary. A cathedral that was slowly becoming a shrine to a hero that didn't want to exist.

  The cathedral was massive, old, and at 4 AM, completely empty except for one very old priest doing rounds with a dim lantern.

  Su slipped in through a broken window high up in the bell tower, a route she'd scouted weeks ago. The tower was dusty, full of bird nests (real birds, the normal kind who didn't have existential crises), and had a perfect view of the city below.

  She set Fernando down on a beam and looked out at Eldermount. Fires burned in the Noble Quarter—torches from the guard search. The tax vault was surrounded by soldiers. The entire administrative district was on lockdown. "I caused that," she said quietly."By accident."

  "Technically yes, because you got trapped by a setup you didn't know about, which led to you fighting a sky-demon with improvised botanical weapons."

  Su laughed. It was a slightly unhinged sound. "My life is absurd."

  "Yes."

  "What do I do now, Fernando? I can't keep this up. The Chancellor knows something is in the city. Vermilion wants me dead and I'm apparently one more good deed away from being canonized as a saint."

  Fernando was quiet for a long moment. When he spoke, his voice had lost its sarcastic edge.

  "You stop trying to be something you're not," he said. "You're neither villain nor hero. You're just... Su who breaks systems that don't work. That's not good or evil. It's just you."

  "But the curse—"

  "The curse wants you to reach Apotheosis by becoming a Sky-Dancer. But you don't have to do it their way. You've already proven that—you completed a Trial by improvising. The system is adapting to you, not the other way around."

  Su thought about that. About the glitched "Contingency Protocol" from the previous loops, about how she'd forced the Labyrinth to accept her loopholes. About how she'd stabilized a dying dragon by breaking the perfection of the Adamant Rosette.

  "So what you're saying is..."

  "You're not following the curse's path. You're rewriting it and that terrifies everyone even the system itself."

  Su looked down at her void-touched feathers. "Rewriting it into what?"

  "I don't know. But I'm stuck with you, so I guess we'll find out together."

  Below, in the main cathedral, a door opened. The old priest entered, carrying his lantern. He walked to a small alcove Su hadn't noticed before—a simple stone shelf, recently installed.

  On it: bread, coins, flowers. Children's drawings. A dozen small offerings.

  And above it, carved into the stone: a crude but recognizable image of a bird with outstretched wings. The priest knelt, placed his own offering, and murmured a prayer: "Bless the Shadow-guardian. Protect those who protect us. Guide the lost, punish the wicked, and grant mercy to your servants."

  Su watched, frozen. "They made me a shrine," she whispered.

  "Yep."

  "I'm not a god. I'm a sarcastic disaster in bird form."

  "Deities have been based on less."

  The priest finished his prayer and left. The offerings remained, small and sincere in the lamplight. Su stared at them for a long time. "I'm in so far over my head," she said finally. "And now I've got a cult."

  "It's a small cult. More of a fan club, really."

  "FERNANDO."

  "I'm just saying, as cults go, this one seems fairly harmless."

  Su groaned and lay flat on the beam. "Wake me up when this nightmare makes sense."

  "That's going to be a long nap."

  Outside, the sun began to rise over Eldermount. The city woke to news of the mysterious attack on the tax vault. Rumors spread like wildfire: the Shadow-guardian had struck again. The corrupt Chamberlain was imprisoned in his own trap. The Chancellor's monster had been driven back.

  The people whispered the name that was slowly coalescing from a dozen half-seen encounters: Shadowbeak.

  And in the cathedral tower, Su slept, dreaming of spreadsheets, audit forms, and the very satisfying sound of a fern hitting someone in the face.

  Murder Pizza

  [WLW LitRPG Satire]

  That wasn’t in the recipes!

  What’s on the menu?

  ? Lesbian leads.

  ? Bingeable short story.

  ? Cozy NOM. This is a pizza book.

  ? Tongue-in-cheek entertainment.

  ? System messages with a side of mockery.