This little girl was fucking insane.

  She hovered motionless in the air before him, entirely too still for anything alive. That grotesque grin never wavered, each fang catching what little light existed in this place between worlds. She watched him with the patience of a spider waiting for prey to stumble into its web.

  Ace had seen that look before. Had worn it himself, sighting down a scope, waiting for the target to step into the killzone. The predator’s patience. The absolute certainty that the prey had nowhere else to go.

  Her dark eyes glittered with ancient malice as she studied his face, drinking in every micro-expression, every twitch of muscle that might betray his thoughts. She didn’t fidget. Didn’t blink. Didn’t even pretend to breathe.

  She just hung there.

  Waiting.

  Grinning.

  In his bones, he knew—he’d been hers from the moment she reached across worlds. This was just her favorite part: watching him realize it.

  This girl had power unlike anything he had ever seen, and he couldn’t underestimate her. If he did, it might be the end of him.

  “I’m guessing it’s not that simple,” he said, suddenly hyper-aware of every minor shift in her expression.

  “There’s that Intelligence stat at play,” she said with a cheery wink.

  He waited, determined not to show his cards first. She had the upper hand, sure, but he had bluffed his way out of plenty of dire situations before. This was no different.

  “You want to go home,” she continued. “I, on the other hand, want to see how far you can go in my wild little world. I’ve worked hard to build the deadliest landscape in existence, after all.”

  He furrowed his brow in confusion. “Are you trying to tell me that you made this place?”

  She nodded, and her eyes narrowed as she studied his features. “I designed every mountain. Every valley. Every tunnel. I am the System, Sergeant, and everyone here must play by my rules.”

  He stared at her, his mind racing at what she had just said. If that were true, she had the ultimate power over his life and everything around him.

  Here he was, about to strike a bargain with a god who didn’t look old enough to even drive, much less rule this expansive land.

  “Someone like you, Ace,” she continued. “You’re unique. I haven’t seen stats like those before on a new recruit, and I think you might be able to solve a few problems for me.”

  He huffed, given that he had plenty of his own issues at the moment, but he did his best to maintain his composure. “What kind of problems are we talking about, exactly?”

  “We’ll get to those later.” She dismissed the question with a toss of her hair. “For now, here’s what you need to know. My world is divided into Floors. Each Floor is its own realm, with its own monsters and unique magic, and each Floor is designed to kill you in the worst way imaginable.”

  “Delightful.”

  She grinned. “It is, isn’t it? I do love giving my players a good challenge.”

  Ace’s eyes narrowed. Eight years of military service had taught him to spot when something wasn’t adding up. “You have the power to transport people between worlds, transform them into mythical creatures, and apparently rebuild reality itself. But you’re using it to play games?”

  “Yep!”

  “Bullshit.”

  Her eyes gleamed, and that sinister expression returned. “Ooh, you really are going to be one of my favorites! And do you know how I treat my favorites?” She leaned in close, her voice dropping to a whisper. “I make the game extra hard for them to prove they deserve my attention.”

  “That makes no sense.”

  Instead of responding, she giggled. Her eyes shut tightly, and she raised one hand to her mouth as her gleeful laughter filled the air.

  “Now, here’s my offer,” she said, pressing her fingertips together as she studied his face. “None of my players have made it to Floor 7. There’s so much wonder and magic up there, and no one’s made it that far. Not one. Doesn’t seem right, does it?”

  “Let me guess,” Ace interjected. “You want me to get there.”

  She nodded. “And if you do, I’ll send you home.”

  “Or you could send me home now,” Ace snapped.

  “I could also rip your dead little heart out of your chest and shove it down your throat,” she said with a lazy shrug, as though the two were equally boring to her. “Doesn’t mean I’m going to do it.”

  The sergeant watched her for a long, quiet moment, scanning her face for tells of a lie—rapid blinking, quickened breath, a twitch of the eye or a nervous brush of a finger against her throat.

  But the System's unnaturally wide smile never wavered. Her eyes stayed locked on his without a single nervous dart away. Even her posture remained perfectly still as she floated there without so much as a single self-soothing gesture.

  Either she was the best damn liar he'd ever seen, or—more likely—she was telling the truth and enjoying every second of his discomfort. It was like studying a cat mid-hunt as it stalked a particularly interesting mouse.

  Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  The thought made his skin crawl.

  “Mine is a world of Skills, EXP, and hard-won power,” she continued, her voice eerily calm. “Level up. Gain new titles. Evolve. Get as strong as you can, and face off with the monsters standing between you and Floor 7. Play my little game. Become the strongest player my world has ever seen. Once you do, I’ll send you home. I’ll even bring you back to the exact moment I took you. It’ll be like you never left.”

  Hmm.

  It all sounded too good to be true.

  “What exactly is this game of yours?” he asked, his brows furrowing as his soldier’s instinct warned him that something wasn’t adding up.

  “Murder,” she said with a teasing lilt to her voice. “The more you kill, the more you evolve. And the more you evolve, the better your odds that you’ll reach Floor 7.”

  Murder. Death. Slaughter. Apparently, everything in this world was built around bloodshed, and that meant everything here was going to try to kill him first.

  Just great.

  “Why has no one made it to Floor 7?” he asked.

  Something flashed deep in her eyes—a hint of mischief, maybe, or something darker—and she crossed her arms in defiance. “Because I’m the best at what I do, Ace. To get to the last floor, you have to master my EXP Solutes system, and no one has ever done it.”

  The girl’s eye twitched, so quickly he almost missed it. If not for his enhanced senses, he might’ve overlooked it entirely.

  A tell.

  The strange floating girl had just lied to him.

  He straightened, his entire body on high alert. He scanned her face, but she didn’t show any other signs of a lie.

  Fine. The only way to wring something useful out of her was apparently to keep her talking. All-powerful as she might’ve been, she was clearly still capable of making mistakes.

  Good. That, at least, gave him a running chance.

  “What’s so special about it all, then?” he asked with a gesture toward the clearing around them. “What have you concocted that’s so impossible for anyone to figure out?”

  “Not impossible,” she corrected. “Not at all! It’s just a matter of your choices, and most people choose wrong. Everything you do, however small, has a massive impact on what you become. Most people miss the forest for the trees. Most people can’t play the long game.”

  Still sitting on the dew-soaked grass, the sergeant propped one elbow on his knee and watched her cautiously. Though his body still ached, the pain lessened with each passing moment. “Go on.”

  “My EXP Solutes system is really quite clever,” she said, her shoulders straightening with pride. “It’s the crux of my game. You see, Ace, in my world, you become what you kill. Everything you battle, every life you take—it all changes you.”

  Huh.

  This little girl was a talker.

  Good. Maybe he could get her to spill something useful.

  “I’m listening,” he said, prompting her to continue.

  As he intently listened, her eyes lit up with excitement. “There are four types of beings here. Vampires, dragons, humans, and a wide assortment of the finest monsters you’ve ever seen.”

  “And I’m supposed to kill them,” Ace interjected, his voice dark with the gravity of what she was asking him to do.

  He was a soldier, yes, and he had taken lives before—but only when he had to. To actively hunt down creatures that didn’t even know he existed just seemed…

  …wrong.

  “I’ve seen that look before,” the System said coyly. “It’s important that your honor doesn’t get the best of you, Sergeant. You’ve got to kill a bit of everything to succeed in my little game. Weak as the humans who live here are compared to vampires like you, you’ll still have to kill them eventually.”

  The corners of her eyes crinkled with wicked delight. Though she paused to study his reaction, he showed nothing on his face. She tilted her head ever so slightly, evidently perplexed, before continuing.

  “Killing monsters makes you stronger and gives you new powers, but you also take on aspects of their ugly forms. That’s why you’ll need to kill humans, you see—otherwise, you’ll lose all connection to your humanity and become a monster yourself.”

  He tightened one hand into a fist, and though he sighed with frustration, he ultimately managed to stop himself from giving anything else away. She was enjoying his discomfort, and he wouldn’t give her the satisfaction of knowing how much that got under his skin.

  “Dragons are easy,” she continued after a while. “Killing dragons makes you more resilient and durable, as well as gifting unique characteristics on occasion. You’ll absolutely have to kill them. And my personal favorite—killing your fellow vampires will increase your affinity for the most powerful magic this world has to offer—the shadows. Just think about it, Ace. Everyone you meet can make you stronger, simply by killing them. It’s a murder-based makeover!”

  The hunger in his gut twisted sharply, and Ace forced it down through sheer willpower.

  “Oh, my,” she said, her chin lifting ever so slightly as she studied him over the bridge of her nose. “Hungry, aren’t you?”

  This girl might’ve looked young, but she carried with her all the casual cruelty of someone who had lived for aeons.

  “You should feed soon, Sergeant,” she said with a cruel little smirk. “You don’t want to go losing control, now, and making bargains you can’t keep.”

  Ace chuckled dryly. In his line of work, he had been shot before. Stabbed. Stranded. Strangled. He had been in active duty for almost his entire military career, and he had seen the sort of hell only a warzone could offer.

  A bit of hunger wouldn’t slow him down.

  “I’m fine,” he said with a lazy shrug, even as the hunger gnawed again at his insides.

  “How stoic.” She placed her hands on her hips and tilted her head, as though she didn’t believe him in the slightest. “That hunger is just going to get worse and worse until you snap.”

  “Is this my life now?” he asked with a low growl. “I have to drink blood?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous.” She dismissed the thought with a cheerful giggle. “Once you make your first kill, drinking blood just restores your health when you’re injured. You can eat normal food, if that’s what you’re wondering. Isn’t that lovely?”

  Instead of replying, he simply met her gaze. No emotion. No reaction. She was clearly trying to goad him into saying something stupid, and he wasn’t going to fall for it.

  “Hmm.” The little girl tapped one finger on her lip as she studied him, but she ultimately shrugged. “Suit yourself, then.”

  With that, Ace gritted his teeth and forced himself to his feet. His head spun momentarily as he stood, and though he had to take a few deep breaths to stabilize himself, he ultimately stayed upright.

  He had been through hell before, and though this little girl had thrown him some curveballs, he would never abandon his men. No matter what tried to take him down, he would find his way home—even if that meant playing by the System’s messed up rules.

  This wasn’t about pride. It was about doing what he had to do to get back to the soldiers who needed him. It was his job to keep his squad safe, and by God, he wasn’t going to let them down.

  “So, do we have a deal?” The System floated higher, until they were eye-to-eye.

  She offered him one hand, her intense gaze resting squarely on him as she waited to see what he would do next.

  The sergeant extended his hand to seal the deal, but she pulled hers ever so slightly out of reach.

  He met her gaze.

  “Remember, Ace,” she warned him. “Every choice matters here. Every single kill you make, no matter how small the EXP gain, no matter when or why you do it, changes what you become. Choose correctly, and you can become the most powerful player this world has ever seen. Choose wrong, and you’ll become someone’s dinner. Do you really think you can beat my little game?”

  Damn right he could.

  He grabbed her palm and shook her hand. Whatever this world held in store for him—whatever this cheerful little gremlin threw his way—he would do what he had always done.

  Win.