I wanted to give up.

Nothing was working.

I tried becoming inedible. As a slime, I was the most foul and toxic creature to have existed in the seven realms. As an amoeba, I crawled up his nose and assaulted his brain. As a wraith, I lost all semblance of physical form.

I came so, so, so unfathomably close.

But every, every time, he would stop me short of the goal.

___

Claire lazily followed the rest of the group through the city. Her steps were slow and methodical. She put extra care into minimizing the sound made by her greaves as she walked along the cobblestone path. There was no real purpose in the endeavour. The streets were still mostly empty—the replay and analysis were only about halfway complete—and she would have blended in even if they weren't. Horseshoes, deershoes, and mooseshoes were as commonplace as fully armoured guards and adventurers.

If she really, really wanted to mute the sound, then she could have simply leveraged the goddess' cloak and fiddled with the material. The whole exercise was more of a game, something that she did to keep herself entertained as she walked through the city with her fox in her arms.

Though admittedly a little bored of going from restaurant to food stall and back, Claire had no intention of abandoning the party. Lana's frustration was one she knew well, and the wolfgirl was clearly cognizant of her presence. She was constantly looking over, and not only because she was trying to fill the fox's infinite stomach.

"The hell are those things? Fried lobsters?" asked Jules. His eyes were on a series of segmented tails, dipped in a rich batter and fried until a delectable golden brown. The breading itself was infused with all sorts of flavour, namely a blend of herbs and dried mushrooms to give it a fresh but hearty punch, and the oil of choice was not even an oil at all. It was clarified butter derived from a special breed of Cadrian cow that produced extra fatty milk.

"Those would be phantom prairiefish," said Allegra, as she grabbed a few sticks from the vendor. He didn't bother asking for payment or otherwise checking her badge. Everyone knew that she was participating. "They're typical fair food. They're pretty hard to find—most of the people harvesting them are high level rogues or rangers."

"Fish?" Sylvia's eyes lit up as she extended her paws and excitedly stretched them towards the skewers.

"Is that not a contradiction for them to be both common and rare?" asked Arciel, as she accepted one morsel.

"You'd think so, but they keep surprisingly well. Their bodies don't rot when properly stored, and we usually hold them for festivals," explained the rabbit.

"They seem tasty," said Lana, after giving one a sniff. She cautiously bit into it, her eyes glimmering as she did. "They're springy and juicy."

"Let me try!" said Sylvia, who was still being held back by her mount.

"Don't be fooled," said Claire. "They're not real fish."

"Huh? They're not?" Sylvia tilted her head.

"They're giant locusts. They only call them fish to make them sound more appetizing."

"Wait, what the heck!? That's a total scam!" cried the fox.

"They're still tasty," said Lana.

"Are you sure? Locusts don't sound very tasty."

"I was under the impression foxes consumed insects regularly," said Arciel.

"Mmnnn… I guess non-Llystletein foxes might?" said Sylvia. "We mostly eat meat and fruit. Oh, and fish, of course."

"I'll eat the rest. If you don't want any," said Lana.

Sylvia paused for a second before turning to Claire and scrutinizing her expression.

"Why are you looking at me?"

"I'm just trying to figure out if they're actually edible."

Claire pinched the fox's nose before grabbing one of the skewers, modifying her mask, and taking a bite. "It's not exactly the kind of food you'd normally serve the nobility. But it's not bad either."

"Really?" Sylvia was still a little skeptical, but eventually accepted and ate the other half of Claire's serving. "Oh! You're right. They're really crunchy. But it feels kinda weird because I still know that they're bugs."

"Anything is better than Llystletein frogs."

"Oh, come on! They weren't even that bad!"

Claire shook her head. "They were like normal frogs, but bigger and chewier. They were awful."

"That sounds like grug meat," said Lana.

Everyone's eyes turned to her right as she bit into a second prairiefish. A little confused, she looked around the crowd with a tilt of the head. "What?"

"Yeah uhhh, I dunno," said Jules. "Eating grugs is pretty fucked up."

"You aren't supposed to eat things that talk," said Claire.

"Yea—wait a second." Sylvia stopped herself with a blink. "Haven't you eaten lamia? And catgirl?"

"I do believe she has," said Arciel.

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"Do I even want to know?" asked Jules.

"It's nothing," said Claire.

"Grugs are tasty," said Lana. "Especially fried."

"They're just frogs. Frogs are disgusting," said Claire.

"If the technicalities are to be observed, I do not believe they are just frogs," said Arciel. "They carry a number of mammalian traits, and it only stands that they would not taste strictly frog-like."

"Hold the fuck on. You guys can't seriously be talking about eating a sentient species like it's the most normal thing in the world."

"It definitely isn't normal, but I've been in some pretty bad situations, and honestly, it isn't quite as awful as you'd think," said Allegra. "Though if I had to choose, thorae is a little better."

This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

"Oh, for fuck's sake. Not you too."

The party continued to quibble about random things as they continued through the city. They weren't exactly wandering, but neither did they have a firm destination. Lana's nose was their guiding light. Following it, they went from stall to stall and street to street, eating and eating, and eating away. They sampled everything from high end gourmet dishes, whose portions were more hamster than horse-sized, to street foods that the nobility wouldn't ever dream of sampling.

It took about two hours for the party to finally put an end to its rampant consumption. Settling in a large, open park, its members were resting in the shade, their guts stuffed so full that they threatened to burst. Not even Lana could stomach another bite. She was stuck staring at a distant cake stall with longing in her eyes and a frown upon her lips.

The battle's analysis had ended roughly halfway through their exploration, and while many remained in the colosseum and watched the replay with their eyes alight, so too did much of the life return to Valencia. There were not only more shops, both of the food and non-food variety, but countless city goers launching themselves through the air and navigating the city from the sky. Though it was yet unrefined, the magical transport had long captured the hearts of foreigners and locals alike.

Chloe and Krail were still nowhere to be seen, however. No one really knew if they were still analyzing the battle, or if they'd simply given up on finding the rest of the group. Even if they somehow knew where they were—Claire suspected that Chloe's extreme perversion would somehow allow her to track her mistress—they would still struggle to navigate the labyrinthine mess that was the Cadrian capital.

Though the streets were not yet fully packed, the city was buzzing in a manner that seemed almost unimaginable for how empty it'd been just a few hours prior. Hooves of all shapes and sizes hammered along the path, with centaurs and regular, armless horses walking side by side. The park was one of the few places where peace was still kept. It was mostly filled with small groups and families, loosely interspersed just far away enough to keep out of each others' conversations as they enjoyed the meals in their baskets. Many had lunch kits purchased from the colosseum, which could be easily denoted from the spear-shaped stamps carved into the containers' handles. The cafeteria-sourced kits were looked upon rather typically by the populace, for they were prepared by a group of master chefs and sold at cost to anyone with a valid ticket, ultimately serving as yet another attraction to bring people into the arena.

The only downside was the limited menu. They typically listed only two or three different sets and would cycle them only once a season. Though the food was certainly delicious, it was unfortunately fairly easy to grow tired of it if one visited the arena too often, and with the season nearly half over, much of the city's population had already done just that.

"I must say," said Arciel. "Valencia is far more peaceful than I had imagined."

"You've got to be kidding me with that bullshit. There's literally a gang war right fucking there!" Jules pointed at one of the nearby roads, where two groups of thorae, one wearing green and the other dressed in purple, were in the midst of a violent brawl.

"To be fair, that isn't exactly normal," said Allegra.

"Yeah, I know, but she still picked a horrible ass time to say it."

"Perhaps." The squid queen laughed. "I imagined a nation far more horrific when I first envisioned the environment responsible for shaping Claire."

The accused lyrkress jabbed the squid in the side with her tail, but it phased right through her body. The part that she touched flickered and moved as if it were a shadowy wisp.

Ciel twisted her lips into a grin that only widened when a second and third attack joined the first in whiffing, only to wince when the fourth landed on target. Having grown sick of the spell, Claire had magically seized the shadowy bits and forced them back into place.

"For the record, we are not all like her," said Allegra, with an awkward smile.

Claire squeezed Sylvia.

"Uhhh, Claire wants me to tell you that you don't deserve to say that 'cause you're a two-faced carrot-muncher and all three of your brain cells are wasted on your stupid god complex."

Allegra blinked, taken aback. "R-right…"

"Oh! And she also wants me to tell you she knows you realised you started balding last night."

"What!? How does she know that!?"

"Apparently, she was playing around with the system and made it so that one of your hairs falls out forever every time you cast a spell."

"Excuse me!? Claire!? Explain yourself right this instant!"

Another squeeze.

"She's not taking questions."

"Claire!"

The rabbit shouted, but Claire childlessly stuck out her tongue and ignored her. It was a blatant lie—she was actually just pulling out the rabbit's fur with her vectors—but Allegra had no way of verifying the claim.

"So uhhh, I hate to rain on you when you're already eating shit, but I'm just gonna go ahead and say that it kinda does seem like you're all like her," said Jules. "I swear, half the goddamn population is ready to throw hands the moment you say go."

"Half is an understatement," said Sylvia. "It's probably more like three quarters."

"I do not believe there are quite so many, but it is certainly in excess of half," said Arciel.

"It's probably more like a third," said Allegra, with an awkward smile. "Centaurs, lamia, and thorae are highly combatitive, but elves and cottontails are a little less so, and we make up most of the population."

"Lots of bunnies," said Lana, with a nod.

There were roughly two or three cottontails for every centaur or thorae. It was largely an effect of the difference in the species' reproductive strategies, with the rabbitfolk reproducing far more frequently and having larger litters each time. The population ratio was a longtime constant, however, at least in part because the centaurs and thorae were typically longer-lived. Some of that difference was natural—some centaurian species, particularly those of the spirit elk variety, could live as long as five hundred—but it was also because more of the centaurs and thorae were ascended.

The natural differences in their size and musculature mattered most at lower levels. The system tried to compensate by giving cottontails higher innate agility and dexterity, but strength and vitality were far more important so early on in the progression process.

And that there was the secret behind Allegra's claim. Technically speaking, she hadn't lied. There really were more peaceful rabbits among the populace than violent ones, but that was more so a factor of survivorship bias than it was an indicator of their nature. Though similar in proportion to the other races, the more reckless and violent cottontails simply tended to die earlier. The same was at least somewhat true of the elves, but they weren't quite as Cadrian as everyone else. Though certainly influenced by their nation of residence, they maintained a distinct cultural identity.

It was, after all, only other elves that readily nodded and agreed whenever they spoke of the gods' nonexistence. One had to wonder how exactly they were able to continue with such rhetoric in spite of all the evidence to the contrary, but that was a very different rabbit hole from the one that Allegra had dug, and Claire couldn't be bothered to pursue it.

Shaking her head of the idle thought, the snoose looked at Lana, who was still gazing longingly at the cake shop and breathed a sigh.

"Lana."

"Yes?"

"I'm only doing this once," she said. "And only because it's a special occasion."

"Doing what?" The wolfgirl tilted her head, confused, and watched as Claire gave her fingers an unnecessarily performative snap.

At first, Lana did nothing but blink and stare, her confusion only growing. But then, she suddenly opened her eyes wide and patted her deflated stomach.

"What happened?" she asked, wide-eyed.

"Oh, you know. Nothing special," said Claire.

Lana wasn't the only one affected by the spell. Everyone else was also back to square one and ready to gorge themselves anew.

"Thanks."

"Uhhh… I dunno if I'd call that nothing special," muttered Sylvia, under her breath. "You literally messed with the system. I don't think aspects are supposed to be able to rewrite skills."

Claire shrugged. "It's not as hard as it looks."

The skill she'd tinkered with was Llystletein Authority, or more specifically, its ability to convert waste to mana. A little bit of fiddling with the system was all it took to change its target and make it so it converted food and drink as well. Alfred's implementation was extremely straightforward and made it easy to swap things out. The most difficult part of the process was accessing the system in the first place, but she'd had that down pat ever since her ascension.

"Yeah right! Not even I can do that!" cried Sylvia.

"You can't?" Claire frowned as she casually popped open a box and invaded the fox's privacy. She figured she was well within her right, given how often the fox liked reading her mind. She ignored the description of the furball's fiery first love, unsaw the section about her secret fantasies, and quickly scanned her status. "Your faith is too high. You could do it if you had a bit more divinity."

"Uhmmm, Claire? You do realise that divinity isn't actually that easy to come by, right?"

"You're over level 2000. All you need to do is flaunt your power and act a little less derpy."

"What the heck do you mean, less derpy!? I'm not derpy!"

"Of course not."

"Claaaaiiiire!"

Smiling, Claire scratched the fox's chin and got up from her seat. "Stop complaining and let's go. Lana's already three cakes in."

And so the party continued to stuff their faces throughout the afternoon. Despite having said that she'd do no more, Claire emptied everyone's stomachs another seven times before the day was out.

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