"Hello everyone! It's your favorite KikiStar! Today I will be showing you~ This!" The beautiful woman in the video said, acting astonished as she pulled a lipstick out from beneath the table.

  "Hmm..." Kiki hummed thoughtfully, taking care not to frown and mess up her make-up.

  For a short while longer, she continued watching herself introducing the newest color of lipstick from her favorite brand. Or well, her "favorite" brand in so far that they gave her the biggest sponsorship contract.

  Almost twenty time did she watch the short, thirty second video, trying to figure out what it was that felt off, and considering which filter would be best to use.

  It took her a while, but finally Kiki realized: The lighting is different, since I started earlier than usual! No wonder it looks weird. Kiki considered as she went through the list of option available.

  Wait! she thought as she noticed something else.

  Quickly, she paused the video, scolling back about two and a half seconds, before swiping up so she could continue scroling between individual frames until she found the right spot.

  In the video, she had just leaned forward over her table to "fix the camera", giving her viewers a perfect shot of her cleavage in the process. Of course, she didn't mind, it had been entirely intentional. And there was no way anything was actually wrong with her set-up, she always made sure to follow the entire to-do list a professional camera-man had helped her with.

  But for an influencer to stay ahead, they had to use all of their assets after all. Be that money to buy expensive products, clothes and props, access to professionals to help her get things just right, her daddy's connections with the big companies, or her own body.

  "Damit! Now I have to do it again..." Of course, she hadn't just searched for a specific frame out of fun. She had noticed a problem. She had leaned forward just a bit too much. It may only be for a split second, but it was enough to leave her bra visible. It was enough to ruin the illusion, and if she had noticed, there is no way her viewers wouldn't.

  "...elp! Hel...!"

  "Urgh!" Kiki groaned in annoyance at the screaming.

  I thought I made it pretty clear they were supposed to keep things silent while I'm filming.

  If they continued screaming around outside she wouldn't be able to continue filming. She still had a video and a few shorts left to do.

  Annoyed at the commotion, Kiki quickly stood up and walked through her recording room, a perfectly and thoroughly styled afair.

  It was a calculated mess of a space, missmatched beside tables, lamps, and rugs, all in the same pallet of pastel pink with accents of gold. But also the occasional splash of brighter colors to draw the viewers eye where it should go. But all of it was tied together by two center pieces, a large, queen-sized bed made from dark hand-carved wood, a genuine antique several times her own age. And a large artwork of a field of flowers beneath a starry sky, the signature of a famous artist in its corner for everyone to see who knew what they were looking at. All carefully designed to give a luxurious impression without looking wasteful or overdone.

  Of course, that was just the part of the room visible to her camera. Off to the side, outside its view, was her studio. A shelf with a collection of pillows and blankets to occasionally switch up the look, and books or other paraphernalia she could put on her bedside tables to make them look used without destroying the overall appearance. A large make-up table, with products meant to be used on and off camera, and under all different lighting conditions. And several manequins wearing all kinds of clothes or otherwise impossible to store cosplays and their props.

  It was an art to make it look like someone lived there without that actually being the case, but Kiki had put a lot of work into mastering it.

  Following the noise, she walked several steps over to the window, pulling aside the curtains to see what was happening outside.

  The sight was... a confusing one.

  Outside on the ground, two floors beneath her window, one of the gardeners was running towards the entrance of the estate. Since she couldn't recognize him, it was probably a new hire.

  "What the hell is he doing?" she wondered, watching the man as he ran. And now she could hear it. He was screaming for help.

  For a moment, Kiki froze, wondering what might have happened. Maybe someone had an accident? But it would have been way faster if he simply called the security, no need to run all the way here and leave the patient alone.

  Well, he probably panicked. She reasoned.

  Anyways, I can probably let the security deal with it. Since it seems to be an emergency I can forgive the disturbance.

  Just as she was about to turn away to go and continue edditing her videos, she stopped. She had seen something else moving, jumping through the hedge at the side of the path.

  "Is that a dog?" Kiki wondered.

  But no, that didn't seem right. The ears were strange, looking like they were trying to be round and pointy at the same time. It was also rather front heavy, with a wide and thick chest. But most telling was the long, thick neck, comparably small head, and the slightly longer hair along its spine.

  "No, that looks more like... Is that a hyena? Why the hell is there a..."

  Suddenly, another jumped through the hedge. Quickly followed by a third, fourth, and fifth, and it didn't stop there.

  "Why the HELL is there a bunch of Hyena's here, and which sick bastard painted them green?" She wondered, frozen as her brain shortcircuited, trying to come up with an even remotely reasonable explanation.

  Huh, now that I see it, they look almost like one of those monsters Jason was so into. Kiki thought bemusedly, reminded of her ex-boyfriends hobbies.

  It really was a shame. Kiki had thought they had a good dynamic going.

  As much as he had tried, he only ever got her interested into two of them, and not really in the way he had planned.

  Cosplaying, which turned out to be a surprisingly great source of Views and Follows and made for really easy clickbait.

  And swords. There was something surprisingly satisfying about swinging around two meters of shapened steel, and it was a great workout on top of that.

  This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

  But Jason's hobbies played to big a part of his life. In the end, they spent less and less time together once the relationship couldn't be carried by passion alone.

  No, that isn't important right now. Kiki thought, focusing again on what was happening outside.

  The frontdoor had been opened, and three Estate security-guards had stepped outside, looking just as confused as Kiki watching the situation. Still, one of them quickly pulled the poor gardener into their shadow, when one of the Hyena's stepped forward, interposing himself between the other man and the animal.

  As one, the guards brought their hands to their hips, and in a smooth motion pulled and pointed their handguns. They waited for a moment for the opposition to react. Well trained, as they should be. Though a little stupid, Kiki thought. Those weren't humans. They wouldn't know what a handgun is.

  Them being hyena's, of course they weren't scared. And when one of them took another step forward, the bark of a gun sounded through the Estate grounds, followed by a shower of pebbles shooting up from the ground in front of the animal, hitting it in the face.

  Clearly surprised, the animal jumped backwards and shook its head.

  That should be solved. Now lets hope no one tries to use that to accuse daddy of animal abuse again.

  Because they had tried that before. Abusing animals, releasing them onto the estate, and filming that to use it as "proof". Damn hypocrites.

  Right, lets hope no one...

  Before she could finish the thought, the animal reacted. Very differently from what she expected. It had backed of. That much had been expected. But instead of turning and running away, around half of the ones that had stayed back suddenly jumped forward, running at the security personell in a single green mass.

  Trained as they were, each of the guards weapons pointed at an enemy in barely amoment, and pulled the trigger, causing the reverb of three semi-automatic pistols to sound across her front lawn as all three guards unloaded the their entire magazines into the animals.

  For an eternal moment, silence reigned. And slowly but surely, one of the animal dropped. One.

  Three guards, nine bullets per magazine, one warning shot. A total of twenty-six bullets she had no doubt had hit the mark. And yet, only one of the animals died.

  And then, Kiki realized, the creatures hadn't made even a single sound until now, nor had their facial expressions changed in any way. Because when they did, it was an eldritch, warbling cry, uncovered with the wet, slimy smacking of wet meat as their faces unfurled like the petals of flower made of meat.

  "What the..." Kiki exclaimed, gagging at the sight.

  Not even finishing the sentence, she turned away from the window and ran for the door of her room. She ripped it open, quickly looking the hallway down in both directions, just to make sure one of those things hadn't managed to sneak in.

  Not amoment later, she jumped into the corridor, turned left, and ran. Only when she was halfway down the stairs did she actually start thinking about what she was going to do, or where her confidence in the face of those... creatures was comming from.

  Well, at least one of those she could answer a moment later. She hadn't even noticed when she grabbed it, but her confidence seemed to come from the two meters of sharpened steel resting on her right shoulder.

  Yeah, that would do it. She thought. There wasn't quite anything like a massive sword to give you an ego-boost.

  The other question though? That didn't answer itself until she turned the last corner and stepped onto the stairs leading down into the entrance hall. Her mind raced as she took in the situation.

  The front door was closed, she must have somehow missed the sound of it. In front of it, the gardener was still holding onto the door handle, hanging in the air as two of the green monsters pulled on him, tried to drag him away with their pettal-maws closed around his feet.

  Kiki froze at the mans scream of pain and horror, trying her best to ignore the rest of the sounds. She instinctively knew she would have to vomit if she paid attention to the squelching, chewing, crunch, or even thought about what was happening to his feet.

  Somewhere to her left, she heard footsteps. People running. Really, it couldn't be many people, not at this time of day. If it was Purity, their cleaning lady, the old woman wouldn't have a chance. What was she supposed to do? Hit the monsters with her broom?

  No, it was more than one person anyways, so it was probably Jack and Elias, the remainng two guards that should still be in the house. And they would at least have guns.

  Which had already proven ineffective. Fuck!

  Horror, an almost deranged excitement, and a strange determination Kiki didn't know she had allied in her mind to push her into motion. Not running away as might be sensible, but towards the creaturesinstead.

  She wouldn't, couldn't, trust the doors in this house to keep those things out permanently. And with the guards guns being almost useless, only her Zweih?nder had any chance of being a viable solution. But the only room large enough to swing the damn thing indoors was the exact room those creaures were in at the moment. The massive entrance haal.

  Having made her decision, and determined to see it through, Kiki charged down the stairs, taking three steps at a time. Arriving at the ground floor, she takes two steps forwards, turns to the left while heaving the massive sword from her shoulder, and spins her entire body to get the thing moving as quickly as possible.

  The moment her body faced back to the front, the sword quickly followed, missing however, as her blades reach fell short. It didn't matter. Continuing with the swords momentum, she brought it back around, windmilling it above her head for a second strike, stepping forwards at the same time, and with a scream put all of her strength behind the attack.

  It felt like her entire body was shaking as the blade bit into the flank of the monster on the right, vibrations running up the weapon, through her arm, and from there through her entire skeletal system.

  Strangely, it was only now that the monsters seemed to notice her and let go of the poor gardeners feet.

  While they turned around, Kiki pulled a her sword with strength born from desperation, the blade so thouroughly stuck in her enemies flank that it almost pulled the sword out of her hands as it turned. Still, she held on, the sword finally getting released with a disgusting, wet squelch.

  Kiki had barely time to pull her sword back towards her and get a grip around halfway down the blade. Using it more like a spear instead of a sword, she barely managed to point the weapon at the creatures maw as it was already jumping at her.

  Kiki wasn't sure what exactly she managed to hit, and neither had she the time to think about it. But as her sword stabbed into the creatures maw, it felt less like hitting an organic being, and more like a boulder as her sword almost got ripped out of her hands, before the tip slid of, bent, and pierced right down its throat and into the creatures stomach.

  That didn't mean, however, that she had managed to stop the creature, momentum still carrying its body to slam into hers, taking her along and throwing her to the ground. For a moment she panicked, thinking that surely, if it couldn't bite her with the sword in its maw, the creature would at least try to claw her dead.

  And yet, the pain didn't come. Moments passed, and the creature stayed limp, unmoving, only lying heavily on her chest.

  "Ha! Hahehe!" Kiki laughed, tension leaving her body and mind, both slowing down as they came down from their adrenalin high from sheer relief. Completely forgetting that...

  BLAM! BLAM! BLAM!

  Three shots fell in rapid succession and panic set in as Kiki suddenly felt another weight on her body, before a hyena-like face looked down on her. She didn't even know how she managed to dodge it when the flower-pettal-maw snapped forwards, trying to close around her head. But that was enough, as suddenly a black figure flew over her body, tackling the beast to the ground.

  "Elias! Get Miss Kindra out of here!" the man screamed, and when Kiki looked to the right, she saw him wrestling with the monster lying on its back, trying to keep it in a choke hold.

  Its maw open, it released an eldritch, warbling hiss, forcefully trying to insert a maddening spike of fear into her mind.

  But as much as much as all her instincts screamed at her to run, she could not. The creature lying on top of her was simply too heavy and unwieldy for her to push off. As such, her mind was once again put into overdrive. And it was only thanks to that that she noticed something. A faint, almost reflective glimmer of red shining in the back of the still living monsters maw. The strangely hard thing she had stabbed with her sword. Something her ex had told her about at some point.

  "Ultimately, fights are supposed to be winneable, even if hard. Its rare that they aren't. So if an enemy seems to be impossible to hurt, they will probably also have some kind of massive weakspot. All you have to do is find it."

  "At the back of its maw!" Kiki screamed, "I think there is something there that will kill the thing if you destroy it!"

  "Some kind of weakspot?" the younger of the two guards, Elias, asked as he tried to push the dead monster of off her body.

  "Yes." Kiki groaned in pain as the monster rolled halfway of off her, but now lying even more heavily on just her right side.

  "Huh," was all he said, quickly walking over to where his boss was wrestling the creature and carefully inspecting its head as it flailed around. "You are right." was all he said as he took out the short crowbar on his belt, aimed it, and heavily swung it into the creatures maw.

  All Kiki could hear was a loud crack, as if what he hit was a crystal, not something organic, and almost immediately, the creature fell limp.

  "Urgha!" Jack, a muscular man with dak skin, groaned as he rolled the monster of his body with some effort, and stood up. "Elias! I told you to ge her out of here!" he almost screamed, poking the significantly younger and shorter subordinate in the chest.

  "Yes, you did. But thanks to miss Kiki, you can now do that yourself!" Elias replied.

  "Hrrmm." Jack grunted, clearly wanting to complain. But he couldn't really say anything against it.

  Despite the fact that the situation went entirely against his command and rulebook, Kiki had little doubt that he was happy to still be alive.

  "Now come and help me. Kiki is still stuck, and these damn things are unreasonably heavy!" Elias complained, making to pull the now dead monster of off Kiki.

  Finally free a few moments later, Kiki made to stand up, only for Elias to give her his hand. Kiki gladly accepted.

  "You know," Elias started as he pulled her up, "I didn't think swinging around that compensation stick of yours every day would actually come in handy some day."

  "You sure you're not projecting?" Kiki replied, groaning in pain as she stood up.

  =====

  Congratulations! You earned an [achievement]!

  =====

  "What..." Kiki started.

  =====

  Congratulations! You can now choose a [Class]!

  =====

  "...the hell?" it was Elias who finished the sentence.