Crunching on sizzled goblin fingers, I reveled in the sensation of the bones splintering in my mouth before the flesh sloughed away like overcooked meat.

The taste was metallic, charred, and perfect.

This delightful new experience—enhanced by my latest skill, Threads of Horror—was unexpectedly addicting. The skill came with a few nifty little tricks I was still unraveling, but one upgrade stood out: something like real teeth.

The threads, once hardened into shape, were dense, sharp, and cruel.

To think I'd gone so long without them—how I'd missed having teeth. Not the delicate silk mimicry I'd been using before, but real, jagged, grinding pressure.

The gratification of chewing—of destruction—of biting down until something snapped.

No more fake silk teeth.

Only the real, bone-crushing, flesh-ripping, pain-inducing kind for me from now on.

Ah, so wonderful!

I continued to happily chew on the cooked fingers.

If I'm being totally honest, intestines are more my style—there's something irresistibly tasty about bitter, pungent meat, especially when the source is still alive—but I'm not exactly fussy.

I sighed at the cooked meat.

Who am I kidding? Raw is better.

The fingers, though, they've got a charm all their own when roasted. Kind of like nibbling on roasted pecans… if pecans screamed when you plucked them off.

For the past month—yep, you heard that right, an entire month has passed since my little excursion on the surface. Damn. Time really does move fast.

Anyways! I'd been playing chef to the beastkin on a near-daily basis, using my various kills as the main ingredient. The fact that they didn't bat an eye at my eclectic menu brought a twisted smile to my face. They scarfed down everything I served—goblin, human, elf, even dwarf. Of course, the non-goblin options dried up pretty quickly after that first raid on the outpost—and any I come across now, well, I prefer to eat them alive. No sharing.

And so! Goblin became the staple.

But hey, I'm not complaining. It's a nice snack for me too. There's something oddly gratifying about feeding the masses.

Turns out, I'm not the only fan of unconventional diets around here. The beastkin were too hungry and too desperate to care what they were eating.

Desperation really is a beautiful thing.

It might've also been fear—maybe they just didn't want to say anything to the cook.

But that's beside the point.

I suppose you could call me the benevolent type. A philanthropist, even.

See, I'm not just some raving, bloodthirsty maniac. Feeding the needy and downtrodden is basically charity work. That definitely scores me good person points, right?

But hey—if anyone begs to differ, I'd be more than happy to yank out their guts and give them a front-row seat to their innards dissolving between my fingers.

And then?

I'd serve them up as tomorrow's special.

Speaking of my cooking—oh, how I relish the taste of pain and suffering between my fingers.

I don't even need to physically eat anything, really—well, not with my mouth anyway…

Actually, that didn't come out quite right.

I'm not saying I can eat things through my ass.

I mean, I can if I wanted—

Um… let me start over.

My mouth is essentially just a construct—a leftover reminder of the humanity I left behind. In truth, my entire body is a means for me to consume someone—perks of being a slime-like monster.

Though, I really do like having a mouth. I can't quite picture myself without one.

It's more of a subconscious creation, like a lot of my body stuff. Lungs. Tongue. Boobs.

…Well, maybe not the boobs.

If I left everything to my subconscious, I'd be back to the pancake chest of my past life.

No, thank you.

I've gotta draw the line somewhere with my subconscious. Standards, darling—standards.

And let's be honest, these babies? Nothing short of impressive. Just like my perfect backside and this killer hourglass figure.

I mean, if you're going to rework your body from the goo up, why not go all out?

Aim high, or don't aim at all—I always say.

We've never said that.

Well, we do now.

Do we have an actual point here, or are you just spiraling about our body issues again?

…Spiraling. Probably. Why?

No reason. Just watching the descent.

Umm… can we circle back? Since when do we have body issues?

Since middle school, you emotionally-stunted, self-melting, goth-disaster of a bra-stuffed broomstick!

Well… um. Let's put those screaming, self-loathing bitches in my head on mute for a sec, yeah?

Ever since I wiped out the outpost, the beastkin started venturing above ground more frequently. And wouldn't you know it—Ms. Holy Bitch hasn't stopped nagging me about it. Still harping on it to this very day.

"What would've happened if they had a Magus Tier caster or physical enhancer in that fort?" she keeps pestering me.

"What's a Magus Tier?"

Did she answer me? Nope. Just more griping.

"If you die, my deal with that snake of a god dies with you."

Oh, how she loves to remind me—every single time I sneak out for my little goblin hunts. Like she actually thinks what happened to her husband was my fault or something.

Ridiculous.

He totally had it coming when he went after our sexy vamp.

Sometimes I wonder why I even bother staying around here. I don't think Asherah would stop me if I left... would she?

Ugh. She's a goddess pretending not to be, helping these beastkin like it makes her less of a ghost. Maybe I should just suck it up. Stay a little longer. Do something good.

Help.

Yeah. Charity.

You're scared of seeing Aurelia.

—Aislinn!

Same person.

I'm not scared...

But—what if she really sees us?

What if she looks at us and sees the truth?

That I'm broken.

That I'm wrong.

That there's nothing left worth loving.

I mean, we're an utter bitch.

I know that.

We've always known that.

I just... I don't want her to reject me.

I don't think we could take it.

…

Anyway—hard left turn from that emotional dumpster fire—but Nikola actually did something smart for once. I think he might actually be a genius.

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Like, real genius. Tiny, twitchy, probably doesn't sleep—but still.

The dude—

Still a gnome, mind you.

Why wouldn't he be a gnome?

No reason. Nope. No reason at all.

—has this whole steampunk toddler-goggled cosplay thing going on now.

Not sure if it's a fetish, self-hate, or a full-blown fashion crisis, but the goggles? Honestly kinda cute. If you're into that sort of thing.

I, for one, don't have an ounce of paternal instinct, so I've got no problem murdering the cute little bastard either way.

He is kind of endearing, though.

Shut up.

I'm just saying—he's small, scrappy, mildly pathetic. You like that sort of thing.

I like blood. I like screams. I like watching people's souls leak out of their eyes when they realize it's me standing over them.

You're deflecting.

I'm sharpening.

But hey, I'm sure someone out there finds him precious and shit—probably the same kind of people who cry during pet food commercials. Let them babysit. I'll bring the knife.

His inventions, though—that's where the whole genius thing I mentioned comes into play. Those crystal-locks? They're like magical throwbacks to flintlock pistols. Soon as we surfaced, Nikola was charging mana crystals faster than you can say boom, and the punch those things packed? Chef's kiss.

They punched fist-sized holes through stone walls. Okay, okay—shabby walls, but still. Color me impressed.

How they'll hold up against those Magus-whatchamacallits Ms. Holy Bitch keeps moaning about is anyone's guess—but hey, it's a start.

And the cherry on top?

Turns out I can recharge and fire those crystal-locks too—which was absolutely hilarious, especially when Anal-lyth's jaw dropped after realizing she couldn't.

Looks like I've got some sort of special touch. No one else but Nikola and I could get those pistols juiced up again.

They could still fire once with a pre-loaded crystal, sure. But after that? Those babies were about as useful as a battery-less vibrator in a power outage.

A battery-less vibrator? I'm not sure that analogy hits the spot.

Why not?

Well, technically, we can still make do without batteries.

That's the point, isn't it? You end up doing the heavy lifting yourself.

That… huh. I guess when you put it that way, it kind of works—in your weird, spiraling, roundabout way.

Hey! Who are you calling weird and spiraling?

Come on. Have you heard yourself lately? You're turning us into a couple of manic airheads with a vibrator fixation.

That's not fair! I'm just trying to keep things light!

You referenced internal suffering with a metaphor about dead sex toys.

…Mood management is a skill.

Girls—

You're both unstable voices in a sludge-brained murder puppet. Can we please get back to the story?

Oh, and last but certainly not least—Nikola kicked off the airship construction, roping in a few beastkin to help. Yep, turns out the beastkin actually had a shipyard, and one of their ships was nearly finished—hadn't even been wrecked during the battle.

The little pipsqueak's out there now, doing the finishing touches.

And! With proper grub in their bellies and no Slaethian soldiers to dodge, everyone's getting shit done.

We all knew it was just a ticking clock until the Slaethian forces decided to snoop around their trashed little fort and bring the fight back to our doorstep.

The airship itself? Not exactly a masterpiece of engineering. More like a hulking ark built to haul bodies than something designed to zip through the skies or throw down in a dogfight.

In other words, it was a glorified commercial cargo vessel. But hey—it's about getting these beast fuckers to safety.

To my Aurelia's hands.

Speaking of her... I miss that vampire something fierce.

Weird, right? Considering we barely even hung out. But she's there—lodged in my thoughts, elbowing her way in between all the screaming voices, the internal bickering... and those reluctant, pointless fears.

So. That's the rundown of the past month—maybe month and a half...

Hard to tell, really. I've been busy, and without a cellphone marking the days, I'm honestly not sure anymore.

Huh.

Yeah, it's been packed with Anal-lyth's endless nagging and those murderous glares she loves to shoot my way. I don't think she likes me.

She's also been pushing me into sparring with her. And unless I tap into my Divine Stellar Core, she usually pounds my ass straight into the ground.

Yeah... turns out I'm not as big of a badass as I thought. That hurt my ego. I won't lie.

Regular fighters and casters? Piece of cake.

But a Champion? Turns out even a baby one like Anlyth is a tough bitch to fight.

Yep—nope. No dice.

I'm completely outclassed, and it is total, unfiltered bullshit.

I mean—seriously? How is it fair that I can wipe the floor with a small army, but one Champion tosses me around like a chew toy in a meat grinder? It's like playing a game where the rules keep changing every five seconds and the developers hate you personally.

Totally infuriating.

That said—I will.

Oh yes, I will.

One day, I'm going to wipe the floor with all of them.

Just you wait and see.

That said, I may have tapped into that Core of mine and kicked her ass a few rounds—with a bit of smug satisfaction, I won't lie.

But apparently that was "cheating."

She said I shouldn't rely on a cheat and should work on my form and fighting style... which, apparently, wrapping tentacles around breasts and thighs doesn't count as. Her words, not mine.

I'd like to think all of Japan would disagree with her.

Refocusing my attention to the present, I found myself in the middle of training with my irritable Champion, deftly dodging yet another one of her relentless strikes. Since I could reconstitute my form from any physical damage—as long as she didn't use magic—she didn't bother pulling punches.

I've lost count of how many times I've had to peel my face off a wall. Literally.

In response, I'd started relying more and more on tentacles—especially the ones from my head—but every time I used my hair that way, she'd just slice it off with her sword.

Yes, Anal-lyth called it cheating, but in my defense, she never complained whenever I got a tentacle into her inner thigh—well, at least not verbally. Though I do think those silk faces hanging from the walls might be her passive-aggressive way of expressing herself.

I could be wrong.

There've been entire sessions where I ended up looking like a freshly shaved Barbie doll—with no skin on my face. Yes, I could make my true pudding-flesh face look like normal oily black skin, but where's the fun in that?

No. I went full tar Skeletor beneath the white silk. A bit of theatrical drama, sure, but I found it entertaining.

And don't even get me started on her teaching skills. I mean, that's the entire point of sparring, isn't it? She's supposed to be teaching me how to properly fight or whatever.

Her actual skills at it?

"Horrible" doesn't even begin to cover it.

It also doesn't help that I might have been daydreaming about raiding another outpost full of moderately-skilled soldiers—now those I can handle—when I suddenly snapped back to reality.

Something felt off.

Everything looked peculiarly askew.

Then it hit me: the world wasn't upside down—I was.

My head was, anyway. Detached and dangling, I spotted my body a few feet away.

Oh. Right. Anlyth had decapitated me. Again.

Classic Anal-lyth.

"We should stop here. You're clearly not focused on our spar," she scoffed, eyeing my severed head with a mix of annoyance and exasperation.

After Anal-lyth's huff, she strutted away, clearly fed up with me for the day. This was her usual routine: beat my ass for hours, get pissed off, lecture me about my "scatterbrain tendencies," then storm off.

She thinks I can't focus? Ha!

—I wonder how that airship is coming along?

Pulling myself together, I skipped the usual step of casting my silk shell. Lately, I'd grown more comfortable with my natural, unmasked appearance.

But the teeth? Oh, those were a must-have. Still, looking like a tar-slick skull with black hair and glowing orange eyes... yeah, it seriously disturbed the shit out of the beastkin.

As I meandered past, some of the beastkin waved—looking healthier by the day. The pallor of malnourishment had begun to fade from their faces. Even the queen had started appearing more often, twins in tow, though she always avoided crossing paths with Anlyth. There was tension between them. Thick. Palpable. But unspoken.

I strolled toward the remnants of the old airship yard, a casualty of Slaethia's destruction. I couldn't shake the feeling of an impending storm.

Birds chirped, flowers bloomed, and the sun(s?) shone down—hard to say with Völuspá's colossal presence constantly looming in the sky.

Actually... have I ever seen the sun? Or just its glow bouncing off that massive planet hanging above us? Hmm.

At night, the landscape transformed into something straight out of Pandora, with bioluminescent plants casting an eerie, alien glow. Völuspá's reflected light blurred the line between day and night.

It made me wonder—what about winter? What happens when Nyxoria's orbit swings us behind Völuspá, away from the sun's warmth? Would we face an endless winter until we reemerged on the other side?

Our thoughts are wandering again.

What? It's a valid question.

Anyways! The airship construction site was a chaotic mess of rubble and ruined dreams.

Amidst the wreckage loomed a massive wooden vessel—awkwardly pieced together from scavenged scraps. It looked more like a ghost ship than any feat of engineering. Honestly, it seemed like it might fall apart before it even tried flying.

Yeah, I said it hadn't been destroyed in the battle—but let's be real, it wasn't exactly "put together" all that well to begin with.

Or, y'know... at all.

As I stepped aboard, I snagged my foot on a rusty nail. Annoyed, I let it dissolve under my goo, a small comfort. The ship was an odd mix of three or four decks, like a pirate ship fused with a steampunk fantasy, maybe co-designed by Captain Kirk. The weird protrusions at the back, which I assumed were engines, looked more like stretched-out rowboats than anything mechanical.

I think they're called nacelles.

I wandered the decks, taking note of the generous gaps in the hull. Sunlight streamed through the planks from all directions—including from above, despite having multiple decks overhead. The more I saw, the more convinced I became that this ship was being held together by hope and stubbornness.

At the stern, I found Nikola, hunched over something large and odd—a rock or maybe a seed, about the size of my torso.

"What is that?" I asked, curiosity piqued.

He glanced up, eyes shining with excitement. "Oh, hey Blake. It's a seed from a great dryad tree. The queen had it hidden away in the vault—way below even the catacombs. Turns out the Slaethians never found it."

He kept tinkering as he explained. "It's not from Yaddith—those seeds are wild—but this one should work. I'll probably need to borrow the crystal powering the beastkin's array."

"Yaddith?" I echoed, brow raised.

Nikola nodded. "It's a moon. Home to the largest of the great trees. This thing's branches reach beyond the atmosphere, and its roots supposedly wrap around the whole damn moon. Pretty crazy, right?"

I tilted my head. "Okay… so what's this seed do for the ship?"

Nikola looked up like I'd just asked whether the sun was hot. "It's the core, Blake. My airships are dead in the air without it. I doubt anyone's replicated my design since I kicked the bucket."

Something clicked. "Wait, weren't you Slaethian before you died?"

He snorted. "Yeah, before they became the zealot squad of the fantasy realm."

"Careful," I smirked. "You'll get canceled for that."

"Fine. Let's just say they're not the friendliest bunch," he muttered, unbothered.

"That's right—you were a reincarnated soul from Earth," I mused aloud.

"I wasn't summoned," he corrected, still etching runes into the seed. "I died. Got reborn here.

Being reborn as a guy, though? That was a shock. Let's just say—while I like peeing standing up, I'm not fond of having a dick... or the size of it," he muttered, barely audible.

"Size?"

"Tsk. I'm tiny. And let's be honest—a normal human-sized penis on a tiny body makes it waaaay too big. Ugh, I miss being a woman. And human. Being tiny sucks."

"I can only imagine being ankle-height," I said with a grin.

…Actually, I can. I've been an eyeball with spider legs before.

"I'm sure," he replied dryly.

Shifting my weight, I eyed the ship again. "So, what are the odds this thing actually flies?"

"Oh, it'll fly," he said confidently. "The framework's solid, and with this seed—and the crystal, if it's got enough juice—we'll be airborne in under an hour. If not... I'll make it work."

I scanned the so-called "solid framework" and eyed the half-hammered nails and uneven boards like a toothless meth addict's grin. Then my gaze shifted to Nikola. I sighed and left him to it.

Climbing one of the staircases to the top deck, a plank snapped under my foot. I blamed the shoddy craftsmanship. Definitely not my weight.

Wondering where we're hiding all this extra mass... We should be the size of three elephants by now.

No idea.

It's piling up on our hips.

Hey!

Changing the subject, I thought about Phantasia—the little black hive of unicorns, goo, and murder. Still no bigger than a plushie, despite her monstrous appetite. She'd joined me on plenty of hunts, though she was a bit stingy when it came to sharing with the beastkin. Not that they were much help during goblin hunts. They preferred hunting those three-headed lizard things—hideous, chewy, and nowhere near as tasty.

But Phantasia? Girl would eat anything. Even more indiscriminate than me. And I'd eat just about anything... including Stiffler's mom.

For the first time in ages, there was a strange calm.

And I didn't know what to do with it.

What do you do when everything suddenly goes... mellow?

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