Chapter 57: Volume 1- [ - 58 ]
He looked at the healer woman. His expression was not kind.
“It is all due to you,” he said. “If you had not blasted our explosive bag, we would have had the charges to seal the entrance. Now we have nothing.”
The woman trembled. “Please — forgive me — I do not—’
“Fuck it,” the third man — the one with the crossbow — said. “We are not going to die.”
All three men turned. Looked toward the road. Saw us — the carriage, the horses, the women, the lord.
“Damn it,” the swordsman said.
“We were not the ones who did it,” the axeman added.
They ran. All three — toward the dungeon, into the dark, fleeing with the desperation of men who had seen something they did not want to explain. The healer woman reached for them, her hand outstretched, her voice calling after them, but they were gone — swallowed by the darkness, their footsteps echoing, fading.
She stood there. Alone. Her hand still reaching. Her face a mask of confusion and hurt.
The carriage stopped. I stepped out. Looked at the woman — the unlucky healer, standing in a field of goblin corpses, her party gone, her robes dirty, her eyes wet.
“It seems we need to talk,” I said, and my voice was calm, measured, the voice of a man taking control of a situation.
Then the system chimed.
Not once. Twice. Two windows, side by side, each one glowing with the soft blue light that I had come to associate with rewards, notifications, and the quiet, insistent voice of an algorithm that was writing my story alongside me.
[ Heroine-Tier Candidate Detected: Seraphine Durnheim (Tank, Iron Aegis) — Title: The Unbroken Shield ]
[ Heroine-Tier Candidate Detected: Elwen (Healer, Forestborn) — Title: The Curious Bloom ]
But before I could process those, a third window appeared. This one was different — the text was not blue but gold, and the font was larger, and the notification sound was not a chime but a bell, deep and resonant, the kind of sound that accompanied things of genuine significance.
[ Heroine-Tier Candidate Detected: Mirra Ashwood (Healer, Unaffiliated) — Title: Blessed by the Goddess of Bad Luck ]
[ Narrative Note: Mirra Ashwood is under divine protection. The Goddess of Bad Luck does not grant her good fortune — she ensures that Misfortune itself avoids her. Those who harm Mirra Ashwood will find that their own luck reverses catastrophically. Those who befriend her will find that the impossible becomes merely improbable. ]
I stared at the window. Read it twice. Three times.
‘The fuck.’
Blessed by the Goddess of Bad Luck. Not cursed — blessed. The woman who had destroyed her party’s explosive bag, who had been present for three party wipes, who had been abandoned by her fourth group — was not unlucky. She was the luckiest person alive, and she did not know it, because her luck did not manifest as good fortune. It manifested as the absence of the worst fortune. She survived. Always. The people around her did not — but she did. And the goddess ensured that anyone who harmed her would find their own luck turning against them.
Which meant I could not hurt her. Could not manipulate her through fear. Could not threaten or punish or break her the way I had broken the others. If I tried, the goddess would turn my luck — and in a world where my survival depended on the system’s calculations and the narrative’s favor, bad luck was a death sentence.
But if I befriended her — if I earned her trust, her loyalty, her presence at my side — the impossible would become merely improbable. Which meant that things that should not work, would. Things that should kill me, would not. The goddess’s blessing, properly leveraged, was the most powerful ability in my arsenal.
I looked at Mirra Ashwood. Small. Tearful. Dirty. Alone. Standing in a field of corpses, her hand still reaching for the men who had abandoned her.
‘What happened? Why did they run? What did I do wrong? I always do something wrong. I am unlucky. I am—’
I smiled.
‘Level 2,’ I thought. ‘Here we come.’
The Goddess of Bad Luck.
I read the window again. Then a third time, not because the words were difficult — they were simple, clean, the system’s language stripped of ambiguity — but because the implications rearranged themselves each time I looked, like a kaleidoscope turning.
Befriending Mirra Ashwood would not bring catastrophe. The system note had been clear on that. Those who harmed her would find their luck reversed catastrophically. Those who befriended her would find that the impossible became merely improbable. The distinction was everything. The adventurers who had died around her — three parties, wiped out, one after another — had not been killed by her presence. They had been tested. The goddess had been weighing their worthiness, and they had been found wanting. Not in strength. Not in skill. In something else — character, perhaps. Or intent. Or the quality of the soul that the gods could see and mortals could not.
They had failed the test. Mirra had not. Mirra survived, always, because the goddess ensured it. And those around her survived too — if they deserved to.
‘What if that plot armor was with me?’ I thought, and the idea settled into my chest like a warm stone. ‘Not the goddess’s favor — I do not deserve that, and I know it. But Mirra’s proximity. Mirra’s presence at my side. If the impossible becomes merely improbable when she is near, then the things that should kill me — the hero party, the noble houses, the original novel’s bad ends — become survivable. Difficult. But survivable.’
I sighed. Let the breath out slowly, through my nose, the way a man sighs when he has been holding tension for too long and has finally found a reason to release it.
The system window faded. The world returned — the goblin corpses, the dungeon entrance belching smoke, the three adventurers who had fled into the dark, and the four women around me who were already talking.
“—an explosive bag,” Mirra was saying, her voice small, watery, the voice of a woman who had delivered this confession so many times that the words came pre-packaged. “I was cooking beside it. I did not know it was there. The blast — it threw me backward, and the noise — it must have alerted the dungeon. The goblins came surging out. The others — they fought, but—”
“It is not your fault,” Elwen said, and her voice carried the gentle, clinical reassurance of a healer who had comforted the wounded a hundred times. “Explosive bags should not be stored near cooking fires. That is a failure of party protocol, not of the healer.”
‘Party protocol,’ Mirra’s internal voice echoed, and the thought was bitter. ‘They told me where to put the bag. I put it where they said. And then I cooked beside it because there was nowhere else. And it blew up. Because I am unlucky. Because everything I touch—’
“You said you were unlucky,” Seraphine said, her voice still clipped, military, but softer than before — the encounter with the wolves, the night of observation, the stained armor had all worn at her edges. “How long has this been happening?”
“Since I joined the Guild. Three months. Four parties.” Mirra looked at her hands. “The first party — the Swords of Dawn — they were kind. They forgave my mistakes. The first time I tripped a trap, Marcus blamed me, but the others said it was fine. The second time, Marcus and Henrik both blamed me, but Tomas supported me. The third time — all three blamed me. And then the trap triggered, and the ceiling came down, and—”