I ran quickly, but just like before, the slimes didn’t show any signs of stopping.

While I crashed through the undergrowth, tripping and tumbling through the green, the slimes simply burned and melted their way towards me.

Nothing slowed them down, I kept running as one of the slimes simply bounced through a thicket of trees behind me, their crashing noise a terrifying addition to the panicked animal voices that echoed in the forest as the slimes destroyed countless nests and burrows.

Panting loudly, I tried to figure out how I could possibly make it out of here unscathed. I remembered the adventurers who had been hit by the slime. I wasn’t going to let that happen to me!

Mind racing, I cycled through my options as the slimes grew closer. I remembered the way I escaped the last slime. Mentally slapping myself for not remembering my wings, I launched myself into the air as the slimes barreled towards me. 

They circled under me, frustrated that I was beyond their reach, and I breathed a sigh of relief.

Then I released it with a shriek as one of the [Air Slimes] suddenly burst into the air underneath me. I twisted desperately in the air to avoid it, and by some miracle I wasn’t hit. Well, now I know what the [Air Slime] does. I shakily thought. I dived to avoid the other one, and it too missed.

This continued for a long time. My new wings, unused to constant flight, started to grow tired. I frowned, before using Soul Siphon to power myself some more. Much needed energy went to my wings as the strain of holding my body in the air subsided somewhat.

I couldn’t keep this up forever though. I could only boost myself so much until my wings simply would not work anymore, the strained muscles giving out from overuse.

I looked for a tree to land in, but every time I tried to land in one and get some rest, a slime would destroy it. Wings growing heavier by the second, I tried to outfly the slimes, but it was far too late now for that. I simply couldn’t get fast enough in the air to outpace them.

I grew more and more panicked as I realized I was slowly drifting downwards, my body too tired to keep going.The slimes kept jumping at me, only now lower. It was then that I understood that I never really had a hope in the first place. They were playing with me.

I started thrashing, trying to maintain some sort of height, if just to prolong my life. [Cyn, you mustn’t panic here, please!] Psyche said, clearly panicking herself.

“I'M GOING TO DIE PSYCHE!” I screamed, giving into the terror that had been slowly building since I first saw the slimes, something that seemed like so long ago, despite probably only being twenty-odd minutes at most.

“I’M GOING TO FUCKING DIE HERE!” I continued to yell, voice growing hoarse as I fluttered weakly downwards, down towards the hungry slimes that now just gathered around where I would land, a charred patch of burnt grass, probably done by the [Fire Slime]. 

I sobbed as I grew closer to the slimes, not yet ready to give up my new life. My rational mind was blinded by the sheer terror I was feeling as I sank lower and lower, framed by the midday sun in the sky like a picture of a falling angel.

I could almost feel the slimes already, their gelatinous surfaces slapping against my soft skin as their acidic touch burnt through me, revealing my insides and leaving me a skeleton, just like the adventurers back there.

Their faces flashed in my mind. The features long since destroyed but I could still somehow tell who they were. Was that Sam I saw? His skull white and picked clean by the slimes? Is that Jameson, sitting down with a look of horror on his face as he examined the still steaming hole where his intestines used to be? I couldn’t tell. I saw people I’d spoken to at the fire, people I’d chatted with marching. The people who slept beside me on the ground last night, and I wept in fear.

Then the images changed, and I saw people from Earth, though their faces were blank. My now insane mind stealing some semblance of memory from Thanatos. I saw my family melt, my teachers die, even my animals. Then I saw a skeleton I somehow knew to be Psyche, and I sobbed harder.

I could still imagine what it would be like to feel the slimes devour me, would it be quick at least? No. The slow, agonized death screams of the adventurers echoed in my mind and I knew the slimes would take their time, the inhuman monsters having no sense of mercy or morals.

I could vaguely hear Psyche in my head trying to comfort me, but her voice was swallowed up by the fear.

Then I didn’t have to imagine it any longer, I hit the ground and immediately the slimes were upon me.

I screamed as the worst pain I had ever felt ignited in my arm as the [Fire Slime] reached me, before pulling back, seemingly to keep me in agony for as long as possible. I shrieked as I saw my arm through a fog of tears, the grilled meat blackened and charred, almost like a barbeque. The image made me giggle slightly as the pain overwhelmed me, and my arm exploded.

I watched despite my mind shattering agony as butterflies climbed into the air, their number low, before dropping even further as the fire slime eagerly snapped them up, not letting them escape.

My legs were next, and I screamed in renewed excruciating pain as one of the [Mud Slimes] rolled up them, ending at my lower waist. There was no bone for me there, only quickly dissolving butterflies.

Then my other arm went, taken by the [Air Slime]. 

I was beyond pain now, barely holding on as I was rendered limbless. It was then that I saw it. The last slime. I laughed weakly, even as hemolymph, the blood of insects, bubbled up past my lips and coated my face.

It was the fucking [Mud Slime]. The same level 17 [Mud Slime] as from yesterday. I could tell somehow that it had made the others hold back, just to see me suffer for escaping it yesterday.

Was that a smug look it was somehow wearing? I couldn’t tell because the slime forced the other [Mud Slime] away. It took the spot at my legs and started slowly rolling up, up and over my waist, moving onto my belly, seemingly delighted in how it’s every movement caused a fresh scream of pain elicited from the agony it was causing me.

It rolled over my chest, melting and melting, leaving behind only steaming piles of dead butterflies as it held back the dissolving effects of it’s gooey slime, if just to prolong my torture.

Eventually, the slime rolled over my face, and I saw no more. No more light, only black, and I knew I was dead again. Back to Thanatos. Some immortal I was.

At least the pain was gone. I flexed my hands experimentally, too shell shocked to even consider the implications of having hands while last time I was just a vaguely butterfly shaped bit of nothing.

I didn’t resist the tug of Thanatos and it pulled me along as I felt the sensation of traveling faster and faster as I raced to meet my fate in the underworld, just like the adventurers that died fighting the slimes.

I didn’t really register any of this though. I could feel it happening, but it was as if it was happening to someone else. I felt like I was dreaming, and whatever had just happened, and indeed, was happening right now, had really just happened to someone else.

I was dragged along until I again came across a light, and feeling nothing, I allowed myself to be drawn towards it.

Psyche was there, I noted absently. She stood over me, much like she had before, only this time I also stood, though I was a fair bit shorter than her.

I simply stood, and after a while Psyche’s mouth stopped moving, and I realized she had been trying to speak to me. I ignored her, still just feeling nothing. Maybe if she realized I was dead inside, then she would cast me away into the unthinking void of Thanatos. If there was anything I wanted at that moment, that would be it.

Then I watched detached as Psyche reached out to me, before touching me on the head and once again saying something. A flash of purple shone from her index fingertip as she placed it on my forehead.

Then suddenly it was as if something broke inside of me, and I fell to my hands and knees on the ground. I was overcome with emotion, the pain of losing my life in such a horrific way forced its way into every nook and cranny of my thoughts. Losing the strength in my arms, I collapsed into the soft, spongy ground and cried.

I don’t know how long I lay like this, but after some time I became aware of Psyche lying down next to me, her form much more visible now that I had eyes.

I kept crying as she reached out to comfort me, and finding no resistance, she embraced me like she had the first time, only now things were different. I couldn’t do this again. To live was suffering. And I had lived–and suffered, my fair share. I was done. Not even for Psyche would I continue.

After some time my eyes dried, and rational thought slowly returned to me. I sat up, still somehow feeling the slimes, and looked towards Psyche.

She stared back at me with devastated eyes, her former joy no longer showing as she beheld what had become of me. Hollow, I reached for her, and she wordlessly hugged me as I cried into her shoulder.

“Why?” I mumbled softly, once I was able to speak again. “Why did it take so long?”

“I don’t know.” Psyche said gently, still teary from watching me die in agony. “All dungeons have a consciousness, but I’ve never known them to be hostile like that.”

Hostile was an understatement. I could feel the contempt dripping from the slime as it prolonged my death almost as much as I could feel the acid dripping from it doing so.

“It might’ve been corrupted.” Psyche said suddenly. “No, it must’ve been corrupted.”

I didn’t know what she was talking about, and I didn’t want to. The mere thought of learning even more about the horrors of Caladias almost made me break down again, and while I don’t think it would happen again, I could feel an emptiness inside of me. One that only grew at the thought of my death.

That probably wasn’t a good thing, but I forced myself to listen as Psyche explained how certain dungeons were born weird, some of the monsters themselves gaining a form of sentience to rival even mortals. I didn’t listen much beyond that, but Psyche told me that sometimes they became so hate filled that they would stop at nothing to kill anything that posed a risk to themselves, even going to extremes such as an agonizing death to deter others.

Overtime, as Psyche spoke, I started to feel more and more alive. I started to watch as her hands continued to glow purple, and eventually I felt more like myself.

Despite this change, I knew I would never be the same. The same mindlessness I had been afflicted by still bubbled beneath a thin layer in my mind that kept it at bay. Somehow I could tell that it was a purple layer. Psyche’s doing.

I waited for a while, gradually feeling myself improve, until I was well enough to gently push her away. “What was that?” I asked her.

Guiltily as if hoping I wouldn’t notice, Psyche removed her hands from my body. “You were too far gone,” She said, voice soft. “Made hollow from the pain caused by that slime.”

At the mention of the slime, my body tightened as I flinched slightly.

Psyche noticed this but said nothing about it. 

“I couldn’t lose you like I do with all the other souls I see drift by,” She said guilty. “Please forgive me for touching your mind.”

I honestly didn’t know if I could. She had done something to me, changed me even if it was for my own sake.

But I decided to let her have this one, if just for now. One day we would have to have this conversation, but I understood where she was coming from. I wouldn’t want to lose the only person I had had a proper conversation with after an unimaginably long time either.

“Ok,” I said reaching out to her, forgiving her. “I forgive you, Psyche.”

She smiled in relief, the first I had seen since I arrived back in her domain.

Speaking of, with actual eyes I could see her and her domain properly now.

She wore the same dress as I had seen her in before, and she seemed to wear no makeup. Her eyes glowed a strong purple like my own, and she too had the same pupils as me. I wondered if she also had the Butterfly Born skill as me because of how similar we looked, with the only deviance being our clothes. Really, she looked exactly like she had before, except now tears dripped down her cheeks slowly.

I stared out at her realm. Anything to take my mind away from what I had just experienced.

Her Realm was very different from how I remember it. The soft, spongy stuff I had been laying down on was grass. Its purple outline was filled with a pure, divine white. Trees too had this color scheme, and were dotted across the landscape.

We stood on a temple of greek design on a hill. When I tried to look down the hill, I only saw the black void of Thanatos.

Her hill was probably only a few hundred meters long and wide. Not much room to live for millennia. 

Psyche saw me looking around and, wordlessly, together we gazed out at the empty void.