The first thing Jessica did after getting kidnapped was tally up how often this had happened to her. Twice by Sir Hayek, once by Morkal, once by Mystiferia, and she counted Min-woo cornering her as at least a Title IX violation. All-in-all, it was getting pretty old.

  This time, however, she had friends nearby and could direct her adrenaline towards something besides panic. Something like collecting information.

  For starters, she heard five kidnappers in total. Three of them—two boys and a girl—talked like people from Earth and were almost certainly adventurers. At the very least she had never heard any native Tushitan complain about missing mall Chinese food before. The other two, a quieter pair, were harem members of one of the two male adventurers. Most likely the ninja-looking guy since they kept asking him for orders and directions.

  “She’s not dead, is she? Do you think she needs air holes?” said the male adventurer who wasn’t the ninja.

  “It’s a sack. It’s got holes,” said the female voice as Jessica felt a sharp fingernail poke at her side.

  “I know… but she hasn’t moved or made a noise in an hour.”

  Shadows on the outside of the sack shifted. Jessica felt a presence near her as the two figures carrying her stopped.

  “I hear her breathing. She’s fine. Probably just asleep or something. Molly. Petra. Keep moving,” said the voice belonging to the ninja guy.

  The female adventurer giggled. “She’s so creepy!”

  “Yeah, no shit. The freak blew Min-woo’s leg off and tossed acid on some Japanese adventurer. She’s a psycho. Why do you think the guild put a bounty on her?”

  Jessica stopped herself from pointing out to them that it was nitrogen dioxide, not nitric acid, that she pelted Akuhara with. They were more likely to let something slip if they thought she was asleep.

  Just in that short exchange her kidnappers had supplied her with two important pieces of knowledge: First, that the Adventurer’s Guild had put out a bounty on her. This was something she suspected was inevitable though it was useful to have it confirmed.

  The other useful (and frankly relieving) bit of info was that Mystiferia didn’t appear to be involved. There was no way the elf warden would pay adventurers for something she wanted the pleasure of doing personally.

  Besides these recent revelations, Jessica also knew they had taken her somewhere by boat, and that ‘somewhere’ was not Elsifeya City. They were probably taking her somewhere down the coast. Handing her over to the Adventurer’s Guild was the end goal, but how they were going to do that was a big question mark. She hoped it took as long as possible.

  “Are we almost there?” asked the voice she assumed was Petra.

  “Almost. You’ll get a break in a second,” the ninja said.

  The sun disappeared and was replaced by glowing yellow orbs orbiting the sack. After several more minutes of walking through a clammy sea cave Jessica was dumped directly onto the floor. Against adventurers there was no sense in trying to struggle, but Molly and Petra—who she could now see were a demon girl and bunny animalar—leapt on her and pinned her down to tie her hands and feet.

  “You said she doesn’t have magic, right?” said the male adventurer who wasn’t the ninja. He had on a basic cuirass, one pauldron, and a small round shield like he was custom-made to die in the first episode of the kind of animated show Jessica didn’t watch.

  “Yeah,” the ninja said, lowering his black face mask to reveal a grin. He rolled her over with his foot. “Apparently she does stuff with chemicals instead. Guess you’re screwed now, aren’t you Ms. Heisenberg?”

  “Her name’s Heisenberg?” the other asked.

  “No it’s from— nevermind, man. Molly. Petra. Tie her to a chair.”

  The two harem members dragged Jessica across the dirt floor to a lighter spot. She there might be a hole in the cave but it was in fact some kind of bioluminescent lichen plastered to the ceiling like weird fungal fairy lights. It would’ve been a fun secret area to stumble on if she’d gotten to explore Tushita as a real adventurer.

  Having nothing much to say to her kidnappers, she glared at them as the demon and bunny girls tied her limbs to a rickety chair. After this they left her alone, presumably to catch up on missed sleep. Exhausted from the ordeal herself, Jessica slipped into unconsciousness and woke up some time later to the three adventurers standing over her.

  “So, wondering why you’re here?” the female adventurer asked.

  The girl was dressed in black robes that closely resembled ones worn by fictitious, magic-wielding children who went to a fictitious magical boarding school. It raised the question of why adventurers plugged into Tushita in different ways. If her hypothesis was correct, she could probably guess what books might have been on the girl’s bookshelf before she died.

  “How much is the bounty?” Jessica asked, her voice croaking from a lack of water.

  “Does it matter to you?” the ninja asked.

  “Not really. I imagine it’s pretty good if you’re willing to break the laws of Elsifeya.”

  “Hah! Coming from the acid lady!” the female adventurer said.

  “Nitrogen dioxide. Not acid,” Jessica replied with no intention of adding that she absolutely had used acid later.

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  The guy who looked like an extra folded his arms. “If you thought some NPCs were gonna shield you from the Adventurer’s Guild, you’re sadly mistaken. Adventurers deal with adventurers and Tushitans deal with Tushitans. That’s how it is.”

  “I had a Tushitan try to burn me alive,” Jessica said.

  “Whoopdie-doo! You must think you’re super special, huh? That you’re the main character? News flash: We’re all main characters,” he said.

  “What about Magnus?”

  “Some characters are more main than others.”

  “I’m guessing you’re pretty low on that list.”

  He slapped her across the face. “Shut your god-damned mouth, homicidal bitch.”

  By definition, she would’ve had to kill someone to be a homicidal bitch. As it was, she wasn’t even a manslaughtering bitch since Min-woo had survived. She was, at most, an assaulting bitch. But since she had a very low pain threshold and didn’t want to get slapped again, she conceded the point.

  “It’s not like she’s wrong,” the female adventurer said.

  “Doesn’t matter. She’s gonna keep her mouth shut.”

  Jessica rolled her jaw. “What’re your names?”

  “Does it matter to you?” the ninja asked.

  “It does.”

  Not expecting the response, the ninja hesitated a moment before saying, “Kagezora.”

  “You’re a white guy though.”

  His nostrils flared. “And? I picked the god-damned ninja job by mistake and had to roll with it. I know the job sucks. I can’t do anything about it.”

  Jessica vaguely remembered Min-woo saying something about some builds being traps for noobs and that there was no way to re-class and re-spec if you did that to yourself. Getting locked into one of the bad ones by mistake was pretty silly. Especially since her brief experience with the system seemed like it was entirely done through hallucination. She wasn’t even sure how you could pick an option by mistake.

  “Are we really giving her our names?” the female adventurer asked.

  “Why not? She’s the one with the bounty, not us. Hell, if another adventurer tries to grab her and claim the reward she can give them the names of the people who actually caught her,” Kagezora said.

  “Sure. Screw it. I’m Ebony Ravenway.”

  “You’re… really pale though,” Jessica said.

  The girl flushed. “It’s not— my clothes are dark! It’s a cool name! Why does everyone give me shit about it?”

  A giggle floated out of Jessica in spite of her circumstances. Last of all was the asshole who slapped her.

  “Jared,” he said in a deflated tone.

  “Just Jared?”

  “What, you want me to make up some silly fantasy name!?”

  His two companions with silly fantasy names side-eyed him. Weirdly, Jessica found herself siding with them for rolling with their weird circumstances. She was less impressed with the protagonist of ‘The Time I Got Reincarnated and Refused to Commit to the Bit.’ That, and he slapped her.

  “What about your harems?” Jessica asked.

  Jared and Ebony both grimaced and Molly and Petra, who had been silent until this point, bit their lips.

  “Theirs are dead. Mine is just Molly and Petra for the moment,” Kagezora said.

  “A run-in with other adventurers?”

  Jared scowled. “I think we’re done chit-chatting. Can I put a hood over her head?”

  “Shut up, Jared. I don’t want to hear your whining either. You’re the one who fucked up and got your party killed,” Kagezora replied.

  “Excuse me!?” Ebony screeched. “Do you think we asked for that to happen!?”

  “No, Eb, I didn’t mean—”

  “Yes you did mean! And you thought about it the whole time, didn’t you? Not like you hid it from Jared when you called him an idiot for taking an A-rank quest. What other quests do you want us to take, huh? You tell me!” Ebony said, shoving him in the shoulder.

  While they quarreled, Jared turned to Jessica and sneered. “Well? Did you get the in-fighting you were hoping for? It’s not gonna help you. I’ll break your legs if you try to escape.”

  From a belt at his side Jared produced a garnet warhammer to let her know how he’d do it. Jessica blinked in shock. Her only ulterior motive in asking had been to get them to humanize her like you were supposed to when getting kidnapped.

  “N-No— I— I genuinely wanted to know what happened to them! I’ve seen the violence against— against harem members first hand, so I—”

  He laughed. “What a shitty lie. I heard what happened to Min-woo’s party. At least other adventurers have the common decency to do it quickly. You’re just evil.”

  “Wait, but none of them should’ve… Did any of his team die?”

  “Like you don’t know.”

  “I don’t! I was defending myself from Min-woo and I did what I had to. I didn’t see what actually happened! Did one of them die!?”

  Taken aback by her outburst, Jared paused. “Uh, yeah. His elf did. Bled out from the wounds to her face. There’s no way you didn’t know.”

  “Ritva…”

  “You got close enough to know her name and you still killed her?”

  “Let me tell you what happened from the beginning with all the details and if you still want to judge me, fine. All I’ve done since the beginning is try to survive. And from where I’m sitting, it looks like it’s the same for you three,” Jessica said.

  The other two stopped bickering to listen to her. All three, even the asshole who slapped her, seemed willing to hear her out. Clearing her parched throat, Jessica readied herself to recount her adventure starting from the lab explosion. Before she could, footsteps echoed through the cave.

  “Did you two hear that?” Kagezora whispered.

  “Shit…” Jared replied.

  Ebony drew a wand from the pocket of her robe. Molly flexed her claws. Petra pulled out a wooden blowgun.

  The last thing Jessica saw was Jared slamming a sack over her head.