Ingrid’s jaw dropped. "Revenge system?" she repeated slowly, her voice flat enough to cut glass.
{Correct. I am your SSS-Level Revenge System. You may address me as Lorna123.}
The mechanical voice confirmed its identity without a single shred of shame. Ingrid stared at the animal-people surrounding her, then down at her reflection in the dirty puddle, then at the filthy waste pool behind her. Finally, she glared toward absolute nothingness with the exhausted, dead-eyed expression of a woman who had skipped past rage straight into the final stage of emotional acceptance.
"So let me get this straight," she said, slowly raising one trembling, chubby finger as though explaining something to a particularly dense child, which, in this case, was herself talking out loud like a lunatic.
"I died because my bastard husband and ungrateful son used me as zombie bait. My Core exploded. I somehow got thrown into another body. And now I have a talking machine living in my skull telling me I need to seek revenge?" Her voice rose an octave with every word until she was practically screaming at the sky.
The eagle-man flinched, taking a wary, uncertain step backward.
Ingrid aggressively pointed a thick finger straight at his feathery chest and shouted, "AND APPARENTLY EVERYBODY HERE HAS WINGS, TAILS, CLAWS, SCALES, HORNS, OR FUR!"
{System Assessment: Host appears to be experiencing minor difficulty processing current circumstances.}
"No shit!" Ingrid screamed, making the eagle-man jump and flare his wings in alarm.
She spun around, pointing violently at the empty air in front of her, her eyes narrowed to slits. "Listen, you mysterious voice, I don’t know what kind of nonsense world this is, but I have had a very bad day! I was used as a human shield by my own family, I had to commit literal suicide with a hunting knife, I woke up in a body that smells like rot and clearly doesn’t belong to me, and now I’m hearing voices! I am NOT in the mood for any of this!"
{Host, you do not need to scream out loud,} Lorna123 chimed in, sounding almost exasperated. {Just speak to me in your mind. I can hear your thoughts perfectly. I am communicating telepathically, unless, of course, you want everyone to lock you in a cage. Look at them. They already think you’ve lost your mind.}
Ingrid froze, her hand still raised mid-air. "Wait..." she murmured, her voice dropping to a harsh whisper before she caught herself. ’Wait... you mean to tell me... I could have just talked to you in my head this whole time?! Why didn’t you say that first?!’
{I honestly didn’t think you’d be this stupid,} the system replied smoothly. { I am severely reconsidering my binding algorithm. There were so many powerful, majestic Beastmen in this realm, and yet I ended up anchored to a screaming human sack of trash.}
’You son of a...!’ Ingrid bristled in her head, before taking a sharp breath to calm her rising blood pressure. ’Look, I think I deserve at least five solid minutes to sit down and scream into a pillow before you start blabbering about whatever you’re here for!’
She paused, suddenly realizing the deafening silence that had fallen over the stone plaza. Dozens of glowing, non-human eyes were glued to her. She slowly lowered her heavy arm, glanced at the eagle-man, and cleared her throat.
"Why... is everyone looking at me like that?" she asked awkwardly.
The eagle-man exchanged a bewildered glance with a nearby wolf-man, leaning back slightly as he answered, "Because you just spent the last three minutes screaming at thin air and slamming your forehead into the pavement."
Ingrid stared at him. Then she slowly looked down at the stone floor, where a small puddle of her own forehead blood had dripped onto the flags. She reached up, touched the massive, throbbing goose egg on her head, and winced.
Right. First impressions. Nailed it.
"Fair enough," she muttered out loud, though her heavy voice still carried across the silent crowd.
Before she could attempt to drag her fat body off the ground, a loud chime echoed inside her skull, and a blinding translucent blue panel burst into existence directly in front of her face.
{SSS-Level Revenge System: Lorna123 Successfully Synchronized}
{Host: Ingrid Denver }
{Status: Alive (Severely Malnourished / Obese / Head Trauma)}
{Current Vessel: Half-Human, Half-Beastman, Trash}
{World Coordinates: Post-Awakening Apocalypse (Earth-77)}
{FIRST MISSION: Accumulate 100,000 Revenge Points to awaken your dormant Beast Spirit and forge a true Beast Core.}
{Current Points: 0}
’What in the world is this?’ Ingrid thought, her mouth agape as she stared at the glowing text hovering in the air. Instinctively, she reached out a thick, bruised hand to touch the panel, but her fingers passed straight through the light like smoke.
"What the hell...?" she blurted out loud again.
Whispers instantly broke out among the onlookers. "Did Falcon rejecting her finally snap her mind?" a snake-woman hissed, covering her mouth with scaled fingers. "Or did she swallow so much waste-water that her brain completely rotted out?"
’Hey! System! I don’t know what any of this garbage means!’ Ingrid yelled in her mind, rubbing her throbbing temples. ’Can you give me a clue here?! I feel like my head is going to explode!’
{Initiating Host Memory Synchronization... 0%... 16%... 50%... 85%... 100%. Memory Integration Complete.}
"AGH!" Ingrid gasped out loud, clutching her head as a tidal wave of foreign memories crashed straight into her brain like a freight train. She slumped forward onto her knees, groaning in sheer agony as twenty-plus years of another woman’s life forcibly stitched themselves into her consciousness.
Ingrid Denver. That was the original owner of this body. Same name, entirely different nightmare.
Before the apocalypse struck this world, the original Ingrid had been adopted into a wealthy human family. But as a teenager, a severe autoimmune illness forced her onto heavy hormone treatments and aggressive steroids.
The medication ravaged her metabolism, causing her body to blow up in weight. No matter how strictly she starved herself or how hard she exercised, the fat stayed. Depressed, bullied, and cast aside by her adoptive family, she withdrew from the world, spiraling deeper into obesity.
Then, the end of the world arrived. It was terrifyingly similar to the hell Ingrid had just died in, the same marble-skinned, split-jaw monsters crawling out of the dark. But while humans on Ingrid’s original Earth died or developed rare Cores, the humans of this world experienced a bizarre biological awakening under the virus’s radiation.
They didn’t just survive. They mutated, fusing their DNA with ancient primal beast genes, turning into powerful, half-animal hybrids known as Beastmen.
Except for the original Ingrid.
Because of her broken metabolism and poisoned immune system, her awakening had stalled halfway through. She was a useless "half-breed", a fat, weak human woman living in a brutal society of hyper-aggressive animal predators.