"Well, that was all fairly dramatic, wasn't it?" Lorelei smiled in her most unthreatening manner, very aware of the appalled regard of the surviving denizens of the Amber Zone.

  Having spent a career working in HR, she was comfortable with her appearance rarely being a cause for celebration. It was not that she had never been especially popular, but rather that Human Resources was not the happy, fun, laid-back department people tended to assume. Her arrival at parties had tended to require a sobering—and a buttoning—up. Nevertheless, considering she had just saved these people from a pretty wholesale slaughter at the hands of those of a much higher level, she did think they could dial up the 'my friend, you bow for no one' energy and lose the 'oh fuck, there's suddenly a red lightsabre and heavy breathing at the end of this corridor.'

  On reflection, though, Lorelei could see that, objectively, what these people had just seen happen would have looked like quite the shitshow.

  With temporarily buffed only to produce positive results, things had gone downhill reasonably quickly for those who had been, up until that moment, enjoying a fairly trouble-free massacre. Firstly, the wild-haired woman throwing out jars filled with noxiously unpleasant substances had the unfortunate experience of all the vials she was carrying in a bandelo around her torso spontaneously combusting. This was both spectacularly unlucky for her and also for the big man with the hammer who happened to be standing next to her. On the plus side, though, he did not have very long to regret his positional sense. Indeed, there was a distinct Wicked Witch of the West vibe to the smoking shoes that both figures left behind.

  As they were blown away, Lorelei again received a pleasant wash of XP and experienced the sensation she was beginning to connect with levelling up. But the fun didn't stop there. Without pausing, Lorelei had continued running up the hill towards the entrance and, with the next toss of her coin, saw the rather skimpily dressed woman floating around, raining thunderbolts down left, right, and centre, being buffeted towards the gates by a sudden—and unlikely—gust of wind.

  It turned out that lightning, giant metal spikes, and human flesh were quite the combination. Another outpouring of XP came her way.

  Finally, the smell of the cooking meat seemed to drive a massive fucking panther whose mouth and claws were soaked in blood, rather out of its mind. It leapt towards the nearest fresh body, a thin, intense-looking teenager, who reacted to the deadly assault with all the screaming incredulity and surprise of a pit bull owner who, having fucked around, was very much finding out. A final toss of her coin had a stray bolt from the barbequed remains of the lightning-flinger arc downwards to incinerate the panther.

  The whole debacle had taken about ninety seconds.

  To be honest, Lorelei didn't much care about that, right now.

  One moment, she was about to be murdered horribly, and now she was alive. Of course, it would have been nice to have reached whatever Level her epically cool slaughter of her attackers would have led her to, but she couldn't exactly argue that it had been hard-earned. Still, she had a few other pressing problems. Namely the complete horror and concern being generated towards her by the survivors of the assault on the Botanical Gardens.

  "Did . . . did you do that?" A spotty young man in the most elaborate robes Lorelei had seen—before or after—the integration cautiously moved towards her. "I mean," he waved a hand at what remained of the corpses of those who had come from the Red Zone, "was that you?"

  "I suppose the answer to that question depends on how grateful you are all feeling. If it's going to be cheers, high fives and lashings of ginger beer, then absolutely. All me. Please begin the celebrations. On the other hand, if you're all feeling a bit 'burn the witch' about it, then I need to tell you about hotfixes and entirely temporary powers."

  The Necromancer - she didn't like to judge, but a collection of zombie cheerleaders was following this dude around, so she was going to - half tilted his head to one side and tried to plaster on a smile. "I think I speak for us all when I say we're feeling cautiously warm towards you."

  He looked left and right, and there was a panicked nodding of heads and some minor 'hear, hear' from them.

  Lorelei was concerned how few of those she had seen enter the Amber Zone just a few hours before still seemed to be hale and hearty. Those higher-level guys didn't fuck about.

  Well, she thought, they certainly didn't anymore.

  "Well, that's good, I guess. 'Cautiously warm' I can work with."

  "Okay, fair enough. This sounds like largely good news. However, it not being my first rodeo with you, I'm awaiting the other shoe to drop." Lorelei was aware that strange women talking to themselves was essentially not the sort of behaviour crowds of nervous people naturally relaxed around. However, it felt like the Guide had some vital information to share, and she figured they were cowed enough right now not to make a deal of it if she did not give them her full attention.

  "Seriously!"

  To be truthful, Lorelei wasn't too disappointed to hear that - a Level was Level, after all - but she would be lying if she hadn't felt a momentary thrill about the potential of what she could do at Level 9 or 10. The devastation those guys she had killed had wrought was pretty epic - she wondered what she would be able to do when she had access to that sort of power?

  That thought, combined with the increasingly alarmed expressions on the faces of the crowd before her, suddenly brought that train of thought to an abrupt halt. When did she start thinking, with sadistic glee, about the sort of death and destruction she could cause when she became more powerful? That wasn't her, was it? She had spent a lifetime smoothing out the chaotic fall-out caused by irresponsible bosses. Why would she now be enjoying her own potential to be a despot? Lorelei felt . . . no, 'odd' didn't quite cut it. She felt like she was not actually herself at all.

  Reflexively, Lorelei summoned up her stats sheet.

  Lorelei still did not feel she had enough context to understand those numbers, but they seemed to be going in the right direction. Again, she felt a little moment of loss, as if she had not been able to get the total weight of XP from defeating her most recent foes, but she squashed it down hard. If there was one thing that she was determined to do, it was to not start viewing other humans as an opportunity to grow.

  That resolution made, Lorelei noticed - at the bottom of her stat sheet - was a flashing notification that she mentally clicked on. As with 'Spoilsport', which she had gained at Level 2, this was obviously a bonus choice unlocked when passing a certain threshold. None of them was going to be a game-changer, but hopefully, they would all add up to something worthwhile as levelled up.

  After a moment's thought, she selected the first option. Considering some of the thoughts running through her head, it might be wise to pick something that actually helped other people. Rather than killing them.

  "Sorry to interrupt, but are you quite well?" The teenage Necromancer had brought his zombie cheerleaders to stand in front of him in a protective formation. The rest of the group clearly were moving from 'cautiously warm' towards their saviour, to preparing to jump her.

  Lorelei figured she was rapidly running out of time to be the helpful, mysterious stranger. "Guide, is that the extent of the bad news?"

  There was an awkward silence during which a suspiciously large number of weapons were now in the hands of the people who had moved to surround Lorelei.

  "There's quite a lot that's becoming pretty fucking 'pressing' right now, Guide."

  The words stopped scrolling across Lorelei's eyes, and she was finally able to adequately focus on the lynch mob preparing to do something terminal about the very imminent threat they had identified in their midst.

  Lorelei managed to find her most reassuring smile, summoned up a reasonable tone and cleared her throat. "If I may, just before this gets messy, I have some news about some imminent arrivals . . ."