As fate would have it, Bellona got an opportunity to cause quite a fuss.

  The Rodent Regiment, as the magically armed critters called themselves, were invading yet again. Bellona thought she would make short work of them, but currently she found herself cowering in a trench, keeping her head down as artillery destroyed the road and the cars on it. Car alarms were blaring all around her, sometimes interrupted by explosions as more shells crashed into the asphalt.

  Every time she poked her head out of her trench she was grazed by a magic bullet, confirming her suspicions that the rats brought a sharpshooter this time.

  “What in the world is going on?!”

  ***

  Roughly 20 minutes earlier…

  ***

  “I’m detecting an invasion. Way out, in Kawaguchi.”

  Back home, huh?

  Bellona changed course towards the incident and lost herself in thought.

  Sixteen years ago, a ten-year-old Miori got separated from her parents. She tried to be a good girl and wait on a bench, without realizing that it was wildly out of place.

  Promptly she was transported into a world with faded colors and stalked by something not from Earth. She couldn’t even make out the shape of the beast that leapt at her before she was devoured.

  She was kept awake and was made to watch, without being able to move any part of her body, as the monstrosity emerged from its own pocket dimension and rampaged through the neighborhood. Its rampage luckily only lasted a minute as Minerva Crimson – Hitoishi – arrived at the scene and made short work of the beast.

  Kawaguchi was where she fell in love, maybe it would be where she reunited with her love as well.

  On approach she could already see the Rodent Regiment assembled on a crossing – or not. Rather than the usual formation, she saw a network of trenches, dug into the asphalt of the street, into the nearby convenience store’s parking lot and a nearby garden.

  When did they have time to do that?

  She shook her head.

  Never mind that. All they did was break up their formation, separating themselves by trenches. This will make it easier for me…

  She rapidly approached the trench in full flight, halberd ahead. Her target was the child-sized anthropomorphic mouse on the drums, who must have surely been relaying orders to the rest of the regiment. Then it happened: she hit a magic barrier, strong enough to withstand a head-on halberd attack. Bellona’s eyes went wide and as she bounced off, she was hit in the chest by a shot from somewhere faraway – she couldn’t make out where exactly it was coming from. Her armor took the brunt of the hit, cracking and spreading its shards in every direction as she entered an uncontrolled descent and crashed into the asphalt some distance away from the rodents’ trenches, creating a crater of her own.

  “This is bad! Their defenses are strong, and you won’t be able to withstand concentrated fire like that out in the open. Dig in!”

  Bellona couldn’t argue with that. She summoned a dolabra into her hand and got to digging as magically enhanced bullets flew over her head, making various buildings in the distance collapse upon impact.

  ***

  Bellona gestured and created summoning circles, which slowly manufactured 16th century mortars for her. She regretted not having a proper look around her battlefield before she landed in a hastily dug trench. Pipes and internet cables were laid bare by her digging, making her awkwardly climb over them without exposing her head above the trench. As she crawled, she could still hear artillery exploding all around her - she counted four hits with every volley; maybe that was the number of guns the rodents brought.

  How did their tactics evolve this much over the course of a single month?

  Her next bid was to summon a shield, polished to a mirror-like shine. She lifted it over the edge of her trench and only managed to spot the flashing reflection of a scope from a faraway apartment building’s balcony before her shield was hit by another magically enhanced bullet and obliterated.

  “That’s a problem,” she dryly commented.

  She looked towards the mortars she just summoned and groaned, extending a hand – creating large objects like this still took its toll on her – especially now as she lacked the unity she and Bellona shared for years. Exhausted, she created the first projectiles for her mortars. Contact explosives soared into the air and she could hear them explode upon impact. Using her halberd’s blade as a mirror she peeked over the trench and took a look at the result of her counterattack. Her fire had an effect – the magical shield above the rodents’ positions showed some sign of wear – but not nearly enough for a crack to show.

  “Seriously? I’ll have to hammer them for ages before that gives out…”

  “Who is even erecting that barrier?”

  Bellona shifted the silvery halberd’s blade around, taking peeks at the rodents. She could see helmets peeking over the edge of their own trench, hastily ducking back again after apparently being chastised by their fellow ratkin – then another shot from the sniper nest nicked her halberd’s blade, leaving a circular hole in it.

  “Great. I can’t even get a good look at them.”

  Suddenly she heard a whistle. A trench whistle.

  You’ve got to be kidding me.

  She heard eager screams, and as she looked over the edge, surely enough, she saw anthropomorphic rats, mice and hamsters charging her way with fixed bayonets.

  Bellona cursed and summoned her long guns to her side, managing four of them. She put them over her own trench’s edges and fired into the approaching rodents, managing to hit some of them, who collapsed and were replaced by the usual holographic death markers. She dismissed her halberd and instead summoned a spear that was a bit shorter than her usual weapon – in this cramped space she needed reach beyond the rodents’ bayonets while maintaining her ability to move.

  “Hiyaaah!”

  “Get her! Get her!” The excited squeaking was translated for her as they jumped into her trench, one after the other.

  Bellona stabbed the first one – a shot went off as he dissolved into rainbow-colored cubes and a holographic death marker, grazing her cheek and obliterating a unit in an apartment building behind her.

  The evacuation notice has been out for a while… I hope no one got hurt.

  She spun the spear around by 180 degrees to impale another rat who tried to stab her in the back.

  She kept turning her spear, stabbing to the front or back. More and more rodents poured into her trench, surrounding her. They started to climb on top of her, even as she smashed their little bodies with her armored bracers, even as she impaled them. There appeared to be an endless amount of them, and she even thought that she recognized some of them as the very same ones she smashed minutes earlier.

  So those bastards can rebuild their bodies after I finish them!

  She felt sharp stabs in her shoulder as the rodents climbing her tried to perform their very own assassination of Julius Caesar. She let out a shout as she summoned swords pointed at herself and spun them around her body once, getting rid of most of the critters clinging to her.

  Just as she was about to face the second wave, she heard a sound from above; bagpipes were played and a peculiar melody washed over the battlefield. As soon as it reached the trench, the rodents attacking Bellona suddenly stopped, and she made sure to smash any who were still in her trench before she looked up.

  A girl was floating in the air above the battlefield, wearing a colorful gambeson, split into red and purple, with a green and yellow cape. She wore a red feather hat with a green brim, pants with one yellow and one orange-green split leg, with her feet in yellow crackows.

  Shimmering black hair flowed in the wind as she played the bagpipes – and apparently it dazed the rodent warriors. All of them looked up at her and started to walk in her direction, climbing out of their trenches.

  She was heavily armed. A large sword at her back with two smaller swords sheathed at her hip, while her bracers and boots had ample space for knives and daggers. She even had a flintlock pistol at her hip.

  “Go back!” She commanded them – and they obeyed.

  Portals opened one by one, with the rat, mice, hamsters and capybaras walking through.

  The girl in the gaudy outfit let out a sigh of relief, turning towards Bellona and bowing.

  “I’m so sorry for the trouble they’re causing! So, so, sorry!”

  Bellona didn’t care about her excuses, she had only one thought on her mind.

  “Get down! There’s still a sharpshooter out there!”

  “Huh?”

  She saw a magically enhanced shot tear right through the girl’s right arm before she fell towards Bellona’s trench with a surprised expression – and her arm soared into an entirely different direction altogether.

  “You’re one of them.”

  Bellona’s voice was cold – she held a blade to the unknown girl’s throat, who raised her one good arm in surrender.

  “Let me explain, please!” she pleaded.

  Her right arm was torn off at the shoulder, but it didn’t bleed at all. The place where she was missing a limb was instead glowing in a rainbow color – the very same as the cubes that defeated rodent soldiers turned into. Furthermore, she didn’t appear to be bothered by the loss of her limb in the slightest.

  “Make it quick before I lose my temper.”

  “Right! I come from the same world as the…” she glanced towards the edge of the trench.

  “Rodent Regiment, as they call themselves. But I oppose them!”

  “And what are you, really? What is all this? Is it warfare? Are people trying to attack Earth with drones? With remote-controlled bodies?” She threatened the unknown girl by pushing her sword harder against her neck without cutting her yet.

  The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

  “I… can’t explain in detail. Not here.” The girl complained.

  “Well, you don’t have a choice!” Bellona barked at her. She could see sweat forming on the girl’s forehead as her brown eyes darted from side to side, then she lowered her voice.

  “Use ‘Realm of Duels’ on me.”

  “What? How do you…?”

  “I’ve been watching you. You can pull someone into a pocket dimension with it, right? Please. If I tell you what’s happening just like that, I’ll lose my ability to help you forever.” She looked earnestly at Bellona, who hesitated and thought it over for a while. After a quick look around the battered landscape and another near-miss from the sharpshooter that cratered more asphalt behind Bellona, she finally accepted and pointed her finger at the unknown girl.

  “Realm of Duels!”

  ***

  Bellona was confused; this was not how her ability usually manifested. Normally, she dragged whoever she pointed her halberd at into a copy of their current surroundings. This was not the case this time – she found herself in what she could only assume was a one-bedroom apartment. The walls were chrome-colored, and Bellona faced a large, triangular window.

  It was raining heavily outside, only allowing her to see the intermingling lights and vague shapes of the city outside, but she could make out mind-bogglingly tall buildings that went far above the window – and far below. Whatever place she was in, this apartment was on a high-up floor. As a corner of the window cleared up enough to see through, she recognized the mesh of blue lines on the horizon and in the sky, indicating that this was indeed her pocket dimension.

  A corner couch took up most of the space in the living room, with a device hanging above it, which projected holographic images in four directions. Bellona turned around and saw a vending machine in lieu of a kitchen – the toilet and shower were combined in a niche and in another she saw a bed – and on top of it, a young woman, wearing only panties and a tank top, and something akin to a VR headset.

  Just as Bellona noticed her, the girl stirred. She grabbed the headset and pulled it off her face, looking around.

  “Oh, good! It worked. A little different than what I imagined, but I have a theory regarding how that happened. Your ability probably creates a copy of the area that exists around your target, not yourself.”

  She was a girl with jet-black hair sporting a single red streak, with bangs in front of her forehead and mischievous green eyes. She hopped off her bed and stretched, then she grabbed a pair of discarded jeans and put them on.

  “Sorry about that. I always get comfy when I deep dive.”

  Until now, Bellona was too stunned to speak, but her racing mind quickly found a question she wanted to be answered, no matter what.

  “Am I just a simulation?”

  The girl blinked and looked at her, then she let out a laugh.

  “Ha! No. No, you’re real. You’re flesh and blood. Emotions and biological functions. Just like me! This world here is actually just like yours, with about ninety percent of its history being identical. We’re just for some reason a thousand years in the future from yours.”

  She threw her arms wide to let Bellona have a look at her, then she cleared her throat.

  “And that’s the problem, see? You’re real. Your world is real. And the people playing the game don’t know that.”

  ***

  “Take a seat, will you? You look pale.”

  “Attacking us… killing us… is just a game?”

  The girl held Bellona by the shoulders and let her sit down on the couch.

  “You want anything? Synthcaf? Genejuice?”

  “What are those words…?” Bellona groaned, holding her head.

  “Synthcaf, then! It’s coffee, but… well, you get the idea. Probably.”

  The girl hurried towards the vending machine, stopping in front of it.

  “Oh, uh… does this work in your pocket dimension?”

  “Maybe.” Bellona answered dryly with her thoughts racing.

  The woman shrugged and punched some orders into the machine. She didn’t need to insert coins or hold a card or something like it to a scanner to pay it seemed – with this being inside her apartment it was probably added to her rent.

  “Here you go. Synthcaf.”

  The girl held a can towards Bellona, and she took it. It was cold, but the moment she pulled the tab she felt it heat up.

  “What’s your name?” Bellona asked, finally feeling up to holding a conversation. She took a sip from the can and scrunched up her face. It was like coffee – if someone sucked all the fullness out of it and just left the bitter taste.

  “Disgusting, isn’t it?” the woman laughed, then she cleared her throat.

  “I’m Annette. You can call me Annie, though. My character’s name is PPiper, but I doubt you really want to know that. And you’re Bellona, yes? I managed to catch that much.” She sat down on the couch next to Bellona, sipping from her can as she looked at her with her green eyes. It reminded Bellona of Minerva, which caused her heart to ache a little.

  “So… start from the beginning, please. What is this… game? And why do we always see these rodents with weapons? What do they want?”

  Annette looked at Bellona and let out a deep sigh.

  “Maybe it’s better I show you the promotional material. It’s pretty tasteless, though.”

  “I don’t care. I just want to know what’s going on.”

  Annette nodded and grabbed a remote, pointing it at the hologram projector in front of her. She browsed some kind of video platform and hit a video titled ‘World of Infinity Trailer’.

  The trailer opened with showing the ‘mundane’ life in the city. Waking up in a home that’s barely more than a pod, going to work performing backbreaking labor or sitting in a cubicle for hours, going back home, and repeating the entire process.

  “Aren’t you tired of your mundane life?” The voice of a seasoned narrator asked.

  “Wouldn’t you rather spend your days fighting trolls? Saving princesses from dragons? With World of Infinity, you can find any world you like and make it yours.”

  The holographic display surrounded both Bellona and Annette now, showing them various worlds – a futuristic one like the one they currently inhabited, distant planets, space battles, fantasy realms full of strange critters – and oddly enough, Tokyo.

  “Endless worlds! Endless possibilities! Sandbox fun like you’ve never experienced it before! Become the hero! Become a serial killer and dare the police to try and find you! Invade a world and make it your empire! Anything you might desire – you can make it a reality. Anything.”

  The implication of the last word hung sickeningly in the air as an orc was shown invading a village and approaching the cowering elves – before winking at the observer. Then the video was cut off, leaving only the logo.

  “Available on every current-gen deep dive device!”

  ***

  “You were right. It is utterly tasteless,” Bellona said after the trailer was done playing.

  Annette nodded, sipping on her Synthcaf before she spoke again.

  “A little history lesson is on order.”

  She hopped up from the couch and propped herself up in front of Bellona.

  “Sixteen years ago this world experienced an incursion of odd creatures that looked like orcs and goblins. They did their usual thing people already knew from games: cutting people down, abducting them, the works.”

  She cleared her throat.

  “Our security forces and military utterly annihilated them. Though maybe not completely. There’s still rumors of goblins in the sewers. Anyway: Seven years later the largest megacorporation in the city announces a new video game: World of Infinity.”

  She gestured to her headset on the bed.

  “Deep dive gaming has been the norm for a while. You’d be hard pressed to find a person without the necessary implants these days. You get to see, hear, and feel everything like you’re really there. And yes, that means porn games are rampant, before you ask.”

  Bellona shrugged – though she couldn’t deny that part of her wondered about that.

  “So, World of Infinity releases, people play it, are excited. There’s really an endless number of worlds, and everyone is finding something different. It gets to the point where coordinates of the most interesting worlds are being traded for real money. People do their thing: they play out hero fantasies, or they play out their darker fantasies, but here’s where things got suspicious!”

  Annette leaned closer to Bellona.

  “People kept saying that the NPCs are too lifelike. That they feel pity for them because they beg so convincingly for their lives. Others say that there’s no way a company created all these assets for the game and programmed code to procedurally generate all these convincing worlds in such a short time. And before long, posts talking about those issues get deleted by the corporation.”

  Bellona furrowed her brow.

  “People noticed that it wasn’t a game.”

  “Exactly! And then people got banned from the game if they ever told ‘NPCs’ that they’re part of a game. It became part of the official user agreement. People who kept talking about that issue in the real world were made to disappear as well. And before long, no one was left who cared. Except me.”

  Annette took another sip from her heated can, casually leaning against Bellona’s shoulder as she continued her story.

  “So the guys attacking you are the Rodent Regiment, they’re part of a greater clan called ‘Hameln’.”

  She brought up a holographic screen which looked like a website.

  Bellona leaned forwards to read it.

  ‘RECRUITING!

  ‘Hameln is a dedicated role-playing guild focused on an authentic military experience with magically enhanced weapons! In the past eight years we’ve been active in over 200 different game worlds, with more than half of them being secret coordinates only known to our guild leadership!

  ‘From Napoleonic gun formation warfare, to trench warfare right out of the Great War, we’re doing all of them!

  ‘Anyone can apply*! Skill or level doesn’t matter, all you need to bring is a good attitude and commitment to the RP!

  ‘*anthropomorphic rodent races only’

  Bellona narrowed her eyes at the text.

  “Role play? So, all the weird things they’re saying is just playing pretend?”

  “I’m surprised you can understand them in the first place. They use a plugin that turns their speech into unintelligible squeaking for anyone who’s not in their voice channels. ‘Speech-to-Squeak’ or something it’s called.”

  Bellona shook her head.

  “It’s genuine magic translation that picks up on intent.”

  “Great stuff! Anyway, some time back I infiltrated the guild and got most of their world coordinates out of an officer. You’d be surprised what guys are willing to give up if they think you’re going to have e-sex with them, especially with deep dive gear involved.”

  Bellona scrunched up her face.

  “Hey now, don’t look at me like that! I never did it with him, I left before that. I made a new character and focused on speccing into skills that no one really finds a use for because they’re too situational - but turns out that the useless rat catcher class is super effective against guys who are all rodents. Especially the AoE control magic. Uh. The bagpipe playing you saw me do earlier.”

  Bellona nodded, even though she could feel her mind almost blanking.

  “Right… you were able to command them.”

  “So I made it my life’s goal to interfere at least in that one guild’s killing sprees in other worlds until I find a solution to the bigger problem, which is the corporation!”

  Annette jumped on her feet.

  “That’s the extent of what I wanted to tell you, anyway. I don’t have a permanent solution. Yet. And you can’t exactly help me, either. I’d need to find a way to get you over here and topple an entire megacorporation that controls everything from movies, to video games, to IT infrastructure that keeps the lights on.”

  Annette leaned back against the couch and let out a long sigh.

  “And how do we get rid of them when they attack? They respawn.”

  Bellona was looking at Annette with a serious expression.

  “Oh, yeah. Usually, they don’t allow their members to respawn in one operation for immersion purposes. Today’s a special occasion where they do a World War One theme, so they allow respawns to attack in waves. I’m sorry to say, but they’re going to keep going until it’s bedtime.”

  Bellona’s face darkened immediately.

  “Then what do we do?!”

  “You keep killing them. And I keep ripping control away from them whenever my spell comes off cooldown.”

  A child-sized anthropomorphic rat and a similarly-sized mouse sat on a balcony on a large apartment building – the mouse peeking over the edge of the railing using a periscope, the other waiting with a scoped rifle. Magic runes were etched into the surface of the gun, ensuring that its shots were precise and deadly magical beams.

  “Where are they? They haven’t peeked out in five minutes,” complained the mouse.

  “I got PPiper good with that shot. Maybe it takes a while to patch her up?”

  The mouse shook its head, looking to its partner.

  “She’s been bothering us forever. Stupid griefer. Always coming and killing us, preventing us from capturing land in any of these worlds. And really, she’s speccing a useless skill because it’s a hard counter against our guild’s racial traits?”

  The rat let out a laugh.

  “Well, a little bit of PvP in our PvE can’t be all that bad, right? Still, these glowing girls in this world are stupidly hard bosses. Once we actually kill them, we’ll be making news all over the community.”

  “With all the limitations we put on ourselves, somebody else would have long stolen the kill if they knew how to get here. PPiper only got in here because an ex-officer couldn’t keep it in his pants, too, I heard.”

  “Ah yes… guild drama.”

  The rat shook its head.

  “Police car!” the mouse reported, training its periscope on the new arrival.

  “Want to take the shot?”

  “Eh, sure. Why not? It’s been boring since PPiper put everyone else in time-out.”

  The rat got up and climbed on a stool, taking aim at the police car while adjusting the sights.

  “Sorry, fellas. Only us rodents and the glowing girls are allowed here.”

  “We’re gonna get kicked from the guild if anyone hears us talking out of character like this.” The mouse cackled.

  The rat took the shot. A thin, white glowing beam released from the rifle, shooting the way of the police car. It was powerful enough to obliterate the vehicle and the NPCs inside it, at least it would have been.

  If that damned blue armored girl didn’t throw herself in front of them and summoned a shield.

  “Ughh! This sucks.”

  “Uh! Trouble, trouble!” the mouse suddenly shouted hectically.

  “Thirty degrees to the right!”

  “What is it?”

  The rat turned his rifle and pointed it towards the trenches – where he stared into the opening of a cannon, with a healed-up PPiper bringing a burning piece of wick on a stick to its ignition chamber.

  “It took ages to get up here! Withdraw!” the rat shouted – but it only took half a second after seeing the flash for the cannonball to obliterate their balcony – and by extension, them.

  “Get out of here. Now!” Bellona shouted at the policemen – the car drove away in reverse and turned around, causing Bellona to let out a long sigh.

  “By now they should know that they can’t do anything against interdimensional incursions, why do they keep showing up to them?”

  She looked at the crumbling balcony, flying up and confirming the two death markers for the defeated rodents. She landed inside the enemy trenches now, together with Annette.

  “Now that they don’t have the benefit of their fortifications anymore, it should be easy to deal with them!” Annette shouted with a grin as she drew the short sword from her hip

  “Let’s do some spawn killing until they get tired of us.”

  Bellona nodded. While she disliked the overall situation, she couldn’t help but admit that this would create enough of a fuss to guide Minerva her way.

  Or so she hoped…