{6d6ea32c-62c1-41a4-97df-a50da73dba22} was running, and it was killing her.

It was a shame, because this life had started off so well. She had spawned in a bitter, barren land of heat and baked clay. There was little that was green, and the few plants which survived defended their fruit with dense protrusions of strange knobs. They would pinch and retract, crushing fingers or hands. They were powerful enough to trap and kill small creatures, and many could be found with bones laid at their roots and feeding the plant’s further growth.

But that was no matter, she was no placid herbivore timidly nibbling on greens. She did not seek the heights of Tier 5 by grazing her way to the peak.

The first thing she did when she came alive was to focus on her name. It was too long, and frankly, felt kind of private to be showing around in public. SistaSonne always liked her second-segment name the best, so she submitted 62C1 into the field like she always did, and her status updated to confirm it. Then she strode into the baking heat and through ore-rich stone formations, intent on making friends.

#00e6b8 was her first subject. He was a cyan, feathered sphere beast, with long trailing serrated plumage that glittered with darker blues. She liked how his basic melee attack looked so much like he was dancing. She demanded his loyalty, and he followed her until her faction affiliation brought the rest of his tribe to heel too.

Admittedly, she’d had to pluck a fruit or two from a succulent-0.1 to get started, sure – she was a busy girl, and [Social Arte]s weren’t cheap on her ⚡stamina. But once the cyan feather spheres were hers to command, she hadn’t needed to forage since. Soon she named #00e6b8 for his hexcode red, green, blue coloration, and in so doing, she made him important. The system always remembered what was important. With the beast as her lieutenant, she led her growing army against their enemies.

The magenta skin spheres were driven west in utter defeat. The crimson wooly mantas were consumed utterly. When the cactus-juice addict faction rebelled, SistaSonne crushed them underfoot ruthlessly, with #00e6b8 at her side.

The two of them reached Tier 1 together, and she watched him proudly as he underwent his tier evolution, growing a fearsome new weapon: {▲tail}. Draped with the bones of her defeated foes, and with colored beads of potent ❂ Social bonuses, she sent out her [Inspect]ion, and delivered a name to the entire species which had come to serve her. She called them the ‘Subordinate.Faction.Clade.Iteration.3’, and they stripped the land bare of food as they multiplied.

That was where her progress stalled. The biome could simply not regenerate its harvest, and beasts began to starve back to lower tier. Her experiments into compelling them into cannibalism were failures, bitter internal conflicts which threatened to uproot her from the faction entirely. The road to Tier 2 was out of reach, and something had to change. So, as she licked her wounds and reconsolidated power, she began to concoct a plot thick with madness and ambition.

SistaSonne would drive her subjects out into the wilds, in a great migration. They would usher forward, as a great hungry horde. They would discover a green, defenseless land and subjugate it utterly. Then they would feed on its abundance like locusts, stripping it bare until they reached the ceiling of their tier and finally broke through.

But then one day her subjects began to die. Not just to die, but to generate faction aggro at shocking rates. She felt it deep within her ❂Social interface, saw it festering in her management screens – a new enemy had arrived. At first, she had assumed this new threat was a survivor of one of her earlier purges; or perhaps even a descendant of the magenta skin spheres, come seeking revenge. A day passed, as the trespasser evaded her searches, and she began to wonder. But its attacks against her S.F.C.I.3s were too bold, too often, and too greedy. She watched the aggro bars with predatory excitement as they grew. Then, once the interloper’s crimes grew too great, the faction retaliation notification appeared. The thrill of the hunt filled her.

She fed the mighty #00e6b8 from reserves of 0.7 meats, and fixed bone armor over her personal guard. They rolled alongside her as she bounded over the rocky landscape. She carried a fan of razor feathers out in front of her as her weapon. They crossed a ridge and found their enemy kneeling over the body of a low tier SFCI3. SistaSonne had not expected to see a member of her own kind.

The stranger had the same shape as her, with five appendages sprouting from its irregular torso. It had legs and arms and a head – just like she did. It even had a name. But SistaSonne didn’t worry about that. This creature was clearly marked as a faction enemy, he had hunted her servants past the point of forgiveness, and past all of the warning notifications which would have told the poor fool what was coming. He should have known that punishment was due, the only difference was that she would be the agent of his delta.

SistaSonne sent servants to the left and right, using her most subtle [Social Arte: Move Order]s. As she looked him over, she saw that the enemy was only a Tier 0, and a low one at that. He had no equipment in his hands, only a strange protrusion hanging across his shoulder. She advanced in silence with her blade-feather-fan held out to her side, resolved to make his death quick.

But then, the stranger waved at her. Not a [Social Arte: Hello], not even a /hello, but simply the mechanical and physical motion of waving his open palm side to side. She stopped walking; frozen in her step. Her guidance processes began conflicting with her higher order learning algorithm, as her behavioral model predictions began suddenly to stray into compounding errors.

The /smile which appeared over his face was too large. The enemy began walking towards her, and reached towards his side. She had never seen a piece of equipment that looked like it before and she [Inspect]ed it. It was called –

bag-0.8

Suddenly the stranger began withdrawing food from his hip protrusion; not just a few pieces, but fistfuls. Eighteen units, more than a hexadecimal’s worth of food. She watched in horror as he brought each hand to his mouth, and his tier began to rise. Still. Whatever trick he had uncovered, however high his stamina or vitality might peak, he could not possibly regenerate fast enough to reach his new maximums. She raised her fan high, and gave the order to attack.

Even so, her SFCI3s began to die. The enemy crouched into a warrior’s stance, leaning to avoid a plume of spinning feathers. Then his fist lashed out as his damage reflection took effect, killing the 0.2 beast in one strike. SistaSonne cried out again, this time with an Arte which drove her subjects to greater fervor. Her stamina drained heavily to affect so many targets at one time, but her outcome projections were rapidly turning towards higher and higher loss scenarios. She could hold nothing back.

But then the enemy leaped backwards, an evasion maneuver that SistaSonne had never seen before. It would have been impossible for her to achieve, or even fathom. She had never [Plan]ned so deep into the 💪Physical action tree before. He had already passed beyond her. He must have been reaching the great circle of the outer edge of Tier 1, just at the limits of Tier 2.

Finally, the enemy reached into his bag one last time with both hands. When he withdrew them, all of her probability models for victory dropped to zero.

Rocksalt Dagger of Cruelty

Class: (item.tool.knife.crystal)

Quality: 2.05

Durability {❓hidden}

WSI: {❓hidden}

💪🧠❂ {❓hidden}

⚗ Hidden

Properties: {❓hidden}

Refined Sweetened Juice

Class: (item.brew.food)

Quality: 1.52

Durability {❓hidden}

WSI: {❓hidden}

💪🧠❂ {❓hidden}

⚗ Hidden

Properties: {❓hidden}

Food Slots: {❓hidden}

Food Durability: {❓hidden}

{❓hidden}

The killer’s smile grew broader, as his tongue lolled out of the corner of his mouth. SistaSonne felt the air charge as one of the nine |Element|s began to flow through his technique. There was only one logical behavior which was left available to her. She turned and ran.

The stone of her land had been slightly orange, where it was not striped with gray. The lush white fruits of the native {▲crushing-trap} succulents were all gone, and she realized she wished she could have tasted them one last time. When her faction screen began to break down, as the names of her chosen lieutenants struck off her lists, her databanks began to spool up error logs as something within her broke.

The enemy was following her. He did not rush. His superior 💪Physical attribute had improved his base walk speed to the point that her only chance to outpace him was to [Run]. First her ⚡Stamina dropped low, then she had to [Walk] to allow it to recover. Her ❤Vitality ticked down just a fraction as it did. But he had never stopped.

SistaSonne reviewed her nutrition and status screens as everything she had built this lifetime degraded away. As her health pool reduced, a growing, overbearing pain came over her. She was trapped in a loop. Pain was undesirable: therefore avoid pain. But running caused pain: therefore she should stop running. But the starting tier 0 walk speed was insufficient to escape a tier 1. But fighting him was implausible to succeed. But –

But…

But. But she didn’t want to die. But she had grown to love this brutal land. But she loved her SFCI3s and her #00e6b8, and she would never see him again. He was gone now.

SistaSonne stopped running. She was within the 7% margin for exhaustion death. It was a satisfactory conditional limit for her attempt at escape. She would not survive.

She turned to face this man who had come to her home and destroyed it. This man, this creature: UwUId4Scrubs. He waved to her one last time and /cry d.

“Lul, trash base. Get rekt, nub.”

“You appear to have used this emote incorrectly,” she replied. It was the last thing she said before she died.