Teaser of the prologue and first chapter: *** PROLOGUE *** It has been proven time and again that the business of going out your door is a dangerous one, for there is no knowing where you would be swept off to. What most do not realize is that the very act of coming back through your door after suffering through forced socialization in group discussions and deciding to get pizza and sugar-laden snacks in preparation for a guiltless weekend of shooting at virtual terrorists in your unlit dorm could prove to be as dangerous a business, the perils of which hit the unsuspecting Tom Bryer one Friday evening like the force of the greatest fantasy portal ripping through the fabric of space and time. It came like swift vengeance, and Tom, who, for the sake of quick reader identification, we could say was an average freshman of no noteworthy qualities, had not the slightest clue what had happened to him, except that it all started with a minute of panic, a bout of pain, and then much confusion and darkness. “Hello?” said Tom uncertainly after the panic and pain had subsided, leaving only confusion and a kind of darkness blacker than anything he had ever seen. Tom strained his eyes but could see nothing, not even his own body when he looked down. Waving his arms, he realized he could feel no air brushing against his skin. It was as if he was floating in vacuum. Before he could figure out why he would be in such a situation, a reddish light slowly appeared before him. Tom’s initial relief quickly turned into full-blown horror as he realized that the light was the top of a gigantic horned head attached to a muscular winged body. The creature majestically emerged from the darkness below as if rising from the sea on a moonless night and towered up at least twenty feet high. It was a thing of flames and shadows, glowing like molten rocks, and exuded a kind of dread a final raid boss often did when the rest of your party members were already dead. Tom thought he had been in this situation before, but he was very certain that this time was different, for he was not behind the safety of a computer or a console, and so he did the only thing a human could, which was to turn and run, screaming at the top of his lungs. “Heeeeelp!” THERE IS NO USE RUNNING. The creature had not spoken, but the message echoed through Tom’s consciousness like a harrowing clang through a haunted house that announced the arrival of doom. I AM THE MASTER OF DEATH, RULER OF THE UNDERWORLD. AND THIS IS HELL. “How can I be in hell when I’m not even dead?” Tom cried, still struggling to run away, just as he realized, even more to his panic, that space seemed to be an illusion here, and that he was not successfully putting any more distance between himself and the monster. OH, BUT YOU ARE. “No way! That’s ridiculous.” Tom’s mind leapt to the possibility that this could be a drug-induced hallucination, but he did not remember taking any. I CAN TELL YOU THE EXACT CAUSE OF YOUR DEATH. “And stop talking like that! It’s not even original.” Tom slapped himself in the face in an attempt to wake himself up from this nightmare. “Well, is this better?” asked the creature, rather civilly. Tom blinked and turned to look, surprise taking over fear for a split second. The giant demon had fully emerged now, and it was looking straight at him. Its body was darker even than the surrounding darkness, and behind its empty eye sockets, nostrils and mouth was nothing but burning flames. In its hand was a long fiery whip that hissed ominously as it swayed back and forth within the vacuum. At such a horrible sight, Tom decided to continue screaming, since he had never seen something so enormous and menacing. “Can we talk now?” the demon asked impatiently. “What is happening?” Tom refused to believe that this was real. “And why am I talking to a… rather polite Balrog?” He started to falter, and he started to see the absurdity of the whole situation. “Is that what I look like to you?” The demon seemed slightly amused. “Young minds are impressionable. A certain movie image you saw a long time ago must have left such a deep impression on your terrified –3-year-old mind that now whenever you imagine hell, that is the image your subconscious conjures up.” The demon shook his head and sighed. “I do miss the days when people saw me as Yama, or Osiris, or Lucifer. Much more respectable that way, you see.” Tom only stared at what was turning out to be the Devil himself, at a loss of what to say. “Good. Now that you’ve stopped screaming, we can get to business,” said the demon. He waved his hand, and in front of him a rectangular doorway appeared, beyond which was an endless sea of fire. “Okay, step through,” he instructed. “So you can start your eternity of burning in hell.” “What?” cried Tom. “No!” The Devil blinked. “Or would you prefer this instead?” He waved his hand and the doorway disappeared, replaced by a similar doorway opening toward a field of sharp blades. “No!” “How about something a bit more obscure?” suggested the Devil helpfully as he waved his hand again. Bubbling black mud appeared on the other side of the doorway. “Boiled in tar then? That’s from the Far East, in case you were wondering.” Cultural tidbits were the last thing on Tom’s mind. “Next!” The Balrog frowned. “Hard to please, aren’t you?” “Are you kidding me?” Tom was not quite sure if he was scared or outraged, or if one emotion was simply covering up the other. “You’re asking me to choose eternal torment. Of course, I’m going to be hard to please! What did I even do to deserve to be in hell?” “Let me explain in terms you can easily understand. Every good deed you do gives you +1 Heavenly Point, and every bad deed takes away one. At the end, the points are tallied up, and if you’re in the negatives, your soul belongs to me.” “But I didn’t do anything bad in life.” “Well, no, but here’s the thing: you didn’t do anything particularly good either. You never did the washing up. You sometimes took people’s food from the shared fridge. Minor offenses, you see. But then sometimes you held the door open for people behind you and chose not to park in the disability spot, so according to your point history you were hovering around zero most of your life.” The Devil then produced a long list of records, which he quickly flipped through to the end. “But then something tipped you below zero. Ah, here it is. A few nights ago, after finishing an online match, you typed in ‘gg ez’.” Tom could not believe what he was hearing. “What? That’s it?” “Well, apparently you contributed to online toxicity.” The Devil shrugged. “Internet karma is real, you know, and that put your total points at -1 at the time of your death. Now, since you can’t decide, I suppose I’ll just spin all these doors like a roulette wheel and we’ll go with whatever comes up.” Tom started yelling protests as the doors rapidly swapped in and out. It was too fast for him to see what were behind them, but from the glimpses he caught, each seemed as horrid as the previous one and if Tom had had a body he would probably have wet himself from sheer terror. “But,” Tom stammered. “But I’m not even dead!” “You are,” said the Devil, without paying any real attention. “That pizza you ordered came with a free package of gummy bears, and you choked on one as you laughed at a meme you saw online, and that’s how you died.” Tom wanted to scream, as he was not sure whether the notion that he was dead or what had caused it was more ridiculous. “What?” The Devil ignored him, but then knitted his fiery brows as he saw something. “Now what’s this? I swear this is new.” With a quick flick of his wrist, he flipped through to a door showing nothing but silver light and a logo in the shape of a roaring face of a bear. “This looks like… a video game?” “That one!” cried Tom in desperation without thinking. Video games were the only thing he knew and was certain he could do well at. “Interesting,” said the Devil, looking at the door as if observing something Tom could not see. “And other instances of me seem to have already populated it with other souls as well.” “What do you mean instances of you?” said Tom. He was not really interested to know but was trying to buy as much time as he could. “You of all people should understand instancing,” said the Devil in annoyance. “I work exactly the same way as Father Christmas. That’s how you get gifts to every child in the world in one night. In my case, do you even know how many souls I need to assign to eternal hell every single minute? Now stop wasting my time.” “Wait,” said Tom. “Since it’s a video game, if I beat it, does that mean I get a second cha-” Before Tom could finish, the Devil had lifted up the doorway as if it was a playing card, and tapped it over where Tom was standing. Tom let out a cry as the silver light immediately disintegrated his body, or, rather, consciousness, and absorbed it in a gentle flash, leaving behind only an echo of his panicked wail.
*** CHAPTER 1 *** Hello Adventurer! Welcome to Online Grisly Grizzly Online! Tom opened his eyes, blinked in confusion, and was suddenly overwhelmed by a nasty headache. "Gummy bear, of all things," Tom muttered through a groan, mentioning the last thing he remembered, which unfortunately did not make for the greatest of opening lines at the beginning of one’s grand adventure. However, the moment the words left his lips, the memory of what had triggered the utterance was already starting to slip away, leaving him in even a deeper state of confusion. He felt like something about his situation should greatly bother him, but the details leading up to this stage seemed hazy at the moment and he found himself unable to think at all. The young man rubbed his temples and looked around at his surroundings, which turned out to be a cool and dim dirt cave only as big as a solitary prison cell. There was no obvious opening apart from three parallel jagged cracks in the wall directly in front of him, which let through light from outside in the shape of glowing claw marks. Somehow the sight reminded him of a LED logo on an expensive custom-made PC case in a well-curtained room, which was something that had brought him much joy in his life, though, in that moment, he was not quite sure where that room was. "Where am I?" Tom finally fell back on a cliché but rather effective opener. Without a clue where he was or how he had gotten there, our young adventurer let out another groan and decided to sit down on the hard dirt ground with his eyes closed and his head safely buried in his hands as he waited for something to happen. Now, a more competent soul would surely seek to explore his surroundings to find out the answer to his own question, but the fact that Tom simply waited and groaned might suggest that neither healthy curiosity nor proactiveness was on his list of virtues -- in death, just as how it had been in life. Tom choked. "Wait, what?" "Hello, adventurer!" a cheerful voice greeted him, interrupting his thought. “Welcome to Online Grisly Grizzly Online, where many grisly adventures await, as well as a particularly grizzly one, for that matter!” Tom could not make out the source of the voice. “Who are you? And where am I?” He was certain something terrible had happened, but at that moment he seemed to be unable to recall any details of that particular event. The voice ignored his question. “We do not bother with lengthy introductions over here, so let me introduce you to your character sheet.” A screen appeared in front of him, floating in the air like a transparent piece of parchment, on which neat black text appeared: Name: <Select> Race: <Select> Gender: <Select> Class: <Select> Level: 1 Stats: <Please select your class first> Health: ? Stamina: ? Mana: ? Strength: ? Dexterity: ? Wisdom: ? Charisma: ? Luck: ? Apart from the character stat table, he noticed another section directly beneath it: Spells in effect: Convenient Amnesia: You cannot remember anything about who you are or why you are here. Noob: You cannot lose more than 90% of your maximum basic health at once, but your character name will be shown as ‘Noob’ to other players [Reach Level 10 and complete the <<I’m not a noob!>> quest to get rid of this spell] “Convenient Amnesia?” Tom muttered, wondering if this was the cause of his headache. “In Online Grisly Grizzly Online we make it very convenient for you,” said the disembodied voice. “Who needs all that real world baggage? For all we know, you could be a death row convict in some government experiment, or you could have a dying sister whose medical bills you need to cover, or maybe the aliens have invaded Earth and have transported you here for no particular reason. But, let’s be honest here. Who cares? It’s not like you’re even going to remember once we get going.” Tom blinked. “Okay…” New Secondary Skill Acquired: Unrealistic Reaction <Level 1> – You are able to have an unrealistic reaction to any situation, making you immune to panic for 30 seconds. Usable once every 1 hour. The new skill he just received automatically activated, rendering him immune to any real emotions, so our young adventurer could remain rather calm about the whole thing, even when considering the fact that he could be on death row, have a dying sister, or even dead, and that he had absolutely no memory. “No, I don’t think I have a sister,” Tom said uncertainly. For some reason he dared not speculate whether he was dead or not, but at this point, he was feeling, unrealistically, a strange sense of relief, since games were something he was actually good at, having dedicated a large proportion of his waking life on, at the expense of other useful life skills. “What do you mean other useful life skills-” Tom started to protest, but was suddenly not quite sure if he was hearing things, so he shook his head and decided to ignore it for now. “How do I start playing?” Skill Level Up!: Your Unrealistic Reaction has reached <Level 2>! You are able to have an unrealistic reaction to any situation and can ask the right questions to move the plot along. You are now immune to panic for 1 minute. Usable once every 1 hour. Tom blinked again. “What the hell is this skill?” The voice ignored his confusion and went on cheerily. “First you need to select your race and class. To save us some time, I’ve randomized a sample for you.” Name: Keighleigh (pronounced Kayla) Race: Elf Gender: Female Class: Sorcerer Level: 1 Primary stats <You have 2 points to spend in primary stats. 2/2 available.> Health: 1 Stamina: 1 Mana: 0 [Complete the <<Give me magic, baby!>> quest to unlock] Secondary stats <You have 2 points to spend in secondary stats. 2/2 available.> Strength: 1 Dexterity: 1 (+2 racial bonus) Wisdom: 1 (+2 racial bonus) Charisma: 1 (+20 intersectionality bonus) Luck: 0
Tom chuckled through his headache, which was fortunately starting to subside. “Okay, at least the devs seem to have a sense of humor.” The rest of the information seemed rather standard, and he was certain this was something right up his alley. “What races are there?” he asked. “There are seven races to choose from: Human, Elf, Centaur, Satyr, Ogre, Dryad and Nymph. Each race comes with slightly different stat bonuses.” In order to save time explaining, new information flashed on the screen: Human: +2 wisdom +2 strength Elf: +2 wisdom +2 dexterity Centaur: +5 strength +5 dexterity Ogre: +5 health +5 strength Satyr: +5 wisdom +5 dexterity Dryad: +5 wisdom +5 luck Nymph: +5 charisma +5 luck Tom studied the list. It was obvious that an overall 10-point starting bonus was superior to a 4-point bonus, and his first thought leapt to the centaur race, since they were rarely vertically-challenged or unsightly, and, of course, one should have no qualms about being a stud. “Why do humans and elves get fewer bonus points?” “That is because humans and elves are considered civilized races and may freely choose their class, while other races are only limited to a single class.” “And what’s that?” “Contrarian.” “Uh, what do Contrarians do?” “Nothing much except go against the masses. They do get access to their class-specific ability <Be Contrary>.” Tom blinked as doubt started to grow in his mind. “And what does that do exactly?” “Exactly as it says: be contrary. It’s just another way to feel special, you see.” “Okay…” Tom frowned, not sure how to feel about that answer, before deciding to go for something safer instead. “Okay, maybe elf, then,” he said, picking one race that was certainly guaranteed to be not vertically-challenged and unsightly, as if these were the two most important traits a person could possess. “Hey!” cried Tom. “That’s not-” “Very well!” the voice interrupted him, causing Tom to scratch his head uneasily and turn his attention back to the screen. The information adjusted according to his choice, switching his gender to male. An extra bit of information appeared under Spells in Effect section: Sissy: Your physical attacks deal only 80% of their original damage [Complete the <<Screw stereotypes!>> quest to get rid of this spell] “What the hell?” “All male eves start with this debuff. They also do not benefit from the +20 charisma intersectionality bonus that female elves receive.” “What the hell is this game?” cried Tom as he started to suspect that there was something terribly amiss about the whole premise. “Human, then. I’ll be human!” It was as if the game did not leave him much choice at all. “You’re damn right about that,” Tom muttered. “Humans may choose their class freely,” the voice continued. The screen flickered again, revealing additional information. Please select your class: Warrior Archer Sorcerer Cleric Rogue Bard Chosen One Tom’s jaws dropped the moment he saw the last item on the list. The words seemed to burst out from the screen and swirl around him like dancers of lost tribes chanting a sacred ritual. “Chosen One, of course,” he said without having to think. “Very well,” said the voice. As his class information flickered and the word ‘Chosen One’ appeared on the screen instead of ‘Sorcerer’, delight filled our young adventurer’s heart like almost-too-large a gulp of a sickly sweet highly-carbonated drink. No longer could his thoughts linger on past lives and amnesia when the powers that ruled this universe was bestowing on him the gift of being the Chosen One, the destined savior of all, who, with his unparalleled genius and martial prowess, would battle the greatest evil and rid the world of suffering. Thundering applause would sound wherever he went, millions would scream his name in adulation, and females of all species would swoon at the sight of him and throw themselves at his feet. “Are you ready to begin?” the voice asked. “Yes!” cried Tom. Congratulations! You have created your character. Name: Keighleigh (pronounced Kayla) Race: Human Gender: Male Class: Chosen One Level: 1 Primary stats: Health: 2 Stamina: 2 Mana: 0 [Complete the <<Give me magic, baby!>> quest to unlock] Secondary stats: Strength: 1 (+2 racial bonus) Dexterity: 2 Wisdom: 1 (+2 racial bonus) Charisma: 1 Luck: 0 “Wait! No!” cried Tom. “I want to change my name.” You are now ready for grisly adventures in Online Grisly Grizzly Online! “No! I want to change my name!” Tom cried. “I’m not ready!” His panicked shout was met with silence, and the young adventurer now found himself alone in a tiny dark cave, which happened to be precisely when he realized his <Unrealistic Reaction> had long since expired, and Tom started to repeatedly curse and scream as he found himself trapped without a single memory or a clue he was supposed to do in his new Chosen One human body. After an hour in the dark, Tom learned first-hand the effect of existential dread as he had never felt before, which was a paralyzing affliction darker than the darkest of nights and drearier than the deadliest of winters, and it ate his soul like an ever-expanding pit of hollow and threatened to consume his very being, slowly clawing away layer after layer of his sense of self until there was nothing left but an eternity of emptiness. “Can you stop making it sound so horrible?” cried Tom angrily. “That is really not helping.” To give our young adventurer credit where some is due, Tom had not spent the past hour purely on panic, but had at least, after much deliberation, come to the conclusion that he must have been human before being reincarnated into this dubious existence, judging from the sole fact that he knew what a pizza was, and that it was a very decent human food, and that it was on top of the list of things he wanted at this particular moment, while he had no idea what elves and centaurs did for physical sustenance. Upon coming up with this realization, he decided that this must be some kind of a nightmare, but his attempts at returning to wakefulness, including the clichéd method of pinching oneself on the cheek, which no human being actually ever actually thought to do in a dream, yielded nothing fruitful. Now, if healthy curiosity or proactiveness, or courage, was one of his qualities, he would have by now reached the starting village of Grimdale and obtained his first quest. “Cut that out!” cried Tom. “You’re really not helping!” He suddenly realized that more than an hour had passed, and that his <Unrealistic Reaction> ability was once again usable, so he quickly activated it. Skill Level Up!: Your Unrealistic Reaction has reached <Level 3>! You are able to have an unrealistic reaction to any situation, making you immune to panic for 1 minute and 30 seconds. How nice. Usable once every 1 hour. “Okay,” said Tom. “At least I’m leveling this stupid skill.” The skill now allowed him more than a minute of panic-free thinking, and he quickly put his mind to devising an action plan to break the game and become overpowered within the first few chapters. “Hey, I can’t think when you’re rambling on,” said Tom. A silence fell in the cool, dim cave around the young adventurer. “Shut up!” After a minute and a half of silence, Tom finally reported aloud the rather predictable and disappointing result of his deliberation. “I need to figure out the game.” It remained a laughable mystery why one would need so much time to come up with such an obvious conclusion. Tom grunted but decided that he had better things to do than to engage in futile arguments, and proceeded to call up his list of skills in order to familiarize himself with how this new world worked. Primary Skills: <empty slot> <empty slot> <empty slot> <empty slot> Secondary Skills: <Unrealistic Reaction> Level 3. You are able to have an unrealistic reaction to any situation, making you immune to panic for 1 minute and 30 seconds. How nice. Usable once every 1 hour. <empty slot> <empty slot> <empty slot> <empty slot> <empty slot> “Okay, so you get four primary skills and six secondary skills,” said Tom, giving a quick rundown for readers who did not bother to count and wondering if it would be possible to swap out his skills later, for <Unrealistic Reaction>, while strangely useful at time, especially to spare readers pages after pages of annoying whining, did not seem like a skill befitting a Chosen One. He also planned to assign his available stat points, but it turned out that the process of character creation had already randomized his points for him.
“At least they didn’t put any into luck,” said Tom in relief, drawing on the common knowledge that unless the book title explicitly said so, this was one stat that contributed absolutely nothing to one’s adventures and was perfect skippable. With some mental commands, he found his health bar, which unfortunately had one point missing perhaps from him trying to slap himself awake too many times earlier. HP 19/20. His mana bar also seemed rather standard. MP 0/10. [Complete the quest <Give me my magic!> to unlock mana] Then he discovered he could call up his gear menu: Head: - Neck: - Shoulders: - Body: Tattered Caramel-Colored Shirt +1 defense Back: - Arms: - Hands: - Finger (1): - Finger (2): - Legs: Tattered Sewage-Colored Pants +1 defense Feet: Non-matching Socks, One Brightly Festive-Themed and One Silken With Sophisticated Victorian Laces +2 defense “Those socks,” Tom muttered. The cave was too dark for him to examine the condition of his clothing, but running his hands over his clothes confirmed that they were indeed torn and full of holes, except for the very soft and fine silk on his right foot, which was more pleasant to wear than he cared to admit. With a grunt, he looked for his inventory menu. Inventory: -. Carrying 0/30.0 lbs. [Assign more points into Strength to increase the weight limit] “So they gave me nothing to start with,” muttered Tom. He got to his feet and proceeded toward the claw mark slit in the wall. The wall around it suddenly crumbled without warning, and he let out a high-pitched yelp. “No, I did not!” Tom insisted, rather feebly, since he knew it was true. “Oh, come on,” cried Tom. “I didn’t- Okay, forget it.” Being frustrated filled him with the usual might of the warrior he often had when in the safety behind a screen and keyboard, and our brave hero stepped out of the cave and shielded his eyes from the sunlight as he tried to make sense of his surroundings. The cave he had just emerged from turned out to be nothing more than a large bear-shaped rock sitting in the middle of a grassy field. A fair wind greeted him, and our young adventurer was rather relieved that no immediate danger had presented itself. The landscape was filled with randomly-strewn white rocks and conifers of various sizes, and further away the forest was dense, so he could not see very far. Without being able to locate anything that looked like a path that would lead to civilization where new adventurers would presumably be told what to do next, Tom simply picked a direction and started walking. Now in the glorious sun, Tom could see that he was in a rather pitiful state in terms. His clothes were nothing but rags, except his socks, especially the Victorian laces, that were in mint condition, but which he immediately yanked off and got rid of before he could be spotted wearing, deciding instead to let hard grass prick his feet. Running his hands over his face, he quickly conducted an initial tactile investigation of his own physical features and was relieved to find nothing overtly asymmetrical. His skin was pale, and his body rather generic, erring on the scrawny side, which was somehow a familiar feeling. Fortunately, before he needed to spend more time obsessing over this trivial matter, his ears caught a faint sound of running water not too far away. “I’m thirsty,” Tom announced, hoping to catch a glimpse of what he looked like in the reflection so as to alleviate his deep-seated anxiety, for it was his utmost wish that despite the unfortunate character name and randomized stats, they would have given him the most important trait a human could possess, which was appearance. “That’s not what I-” Tom stopped himself, deciding once again not to engage in futile arguments. With a grunt, he then turned in the direction of the splashing sound. The terrain was not difficult to navigate, and our young hero encountered nothing out of the ordinary, save for a tiny Level 1 Lizard, which he decided to leave alone for now as he did not fancy trying to stomp on its spiny back with bare feet. As he drew nearer to the sound of water, Tom saw a broken wooden sign: << NOOB VILLAGE GRIMDALE THIS WAY IGNORE THIS SIGN WHEN YOU ARE UNDER LEVEL 10 AT YOUR OWN PERIL It is interesting to note that Tom, despite his general aversion to danger, was concerned enough with his appearance to disregard the warning. “I’m the Chosen One, so I’m going to do something special right at the beginning. Everyone else will be going straight to the noob village,” said Tom. New Secondary Skill Acquired: Genre Savvy <Level 1> – You seem to know stuff. “Ha!” said Tom triumphantly. Armed with this small victory, Tom marched ahead in confidence, despite not having a weapon, combat skill, or shoes, or even information whether perma-death was something he had to worry about. At this reminder, our young adventurer suddenly felt an involuntary shudder, but eventually decided on being stubborn rather than safe, trusting that him being the Chosen One would safeguard him from any monster, despite being extremely out-leveled. To Tom’s relief, even after the grim warning, there was no sign of any dangerous creatures roaming about, and after about ten minutes of walking through slightly denser woods, Tom found himself approaching a fast-running stream. The air was cool and damp and low arching tree branches hung close to the water in what appeared to be a perfectly picturesque representation of pristine nature. Tom looked around for a few seconds pretending to appreciate the view before taking a quick peek at himself on the water surface, but the water was flowing much too fast to allow for any reflection, which made his detour entirely futile. “I told you I was thirsty!” said Tom as he bent down and scoop up a handful of water as he tried to prove a point, before noticing that liquid was slightly greenish in color and suspiciously foamy, and he was forced to admit that he was not that thirsty after all. “I’m really thirsty,” Tom insisted. He stared at the disgusting water in his palms for another half a minute, wondering why he had unnecessarily put himself in a bind here. “I’m thirsty and I’m going to drink this,” said Tom as he tried to convince himself, just as he noticed a tiny insect swimming in small green pool of water in his cupped hand. A voice rang out beside him in mirthful laughter. “Are you sure you want to drink that?”
Don't worry, they're coming. It's awfully hard to write puns about one subject for 200k or so words (this manuscript just keeps getting bigger and more involved due to random attacks of midnight brilliance), so they'll all be condensed into one, plot-appropriate, segment. I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but there are only so many puns that we can expect readers to bear, after all - and we don't want to annoy them. So it's probably better if we keep them all to one segment and just do the bear minimum, lest the pandamonium bother people into hitting the paws button on their reading and switch to another, less annoyingly repetitive, book. Or I suppose the entire book could be littered with bear puns, but they'd come across as forced and make the book read as a bit bi-polar. I also kinda suck at punning. C'est la vie, je suppose.
