“Alex… is that you?” An angelic voice drifts to me, cutting through my pleasant sleep. A fuzzy but somehow clear face floats above my own, looking me over in worry. A face that I instantly recognize.

I crack a dopey smile. “Lina!” The girl I met in that hell, the one I fell for, who kept me together, hovers near me. Sluggishly, I realize I need to answer her. “Yeah, it’s me.” 

This is a nice dream. Maybe that Administrator gave it to me as compensation? Who knows.

“Alex,” Lina says softly, tears welling up in her eyes. “Are you… are you alive?” 

I raise an eyebrow, what an odd question. “Of course, how else would you be in my dream?” 

She looks surprised for a second, before smiling warmly. Choking back a sob, she nods at my words. “What was I thinking? I’m glad you’re okay, Alex.” 

I nod in reply. “Me too, I hope you’re alive, too. I don’t…” I trail off, the idea of losing her shaking my core. 

For some reason this makes the dream-Lina laugh. “I’m alive too, silly. I’m in some backwards kingdom.” She frowns at mentioning her location. “Currently I’m sleeping in an inn inside the town of Abernuckle. I’ll stay here for a week, meet me here if you’re near.” 

With that, the face collapses into mist, dissolving back into my dream. What weirdly specific details for a dream. Whatever, not like I’ll remember any of this. 

I never remember my dreams.

 

────────────

 

Betton wakes me up at the crack of dawn. His scrawny arms manage to shake me out of my slumber. Somehow he managed to get inside the room without a key, the door still locked behind his thin form. 

“Alex, we need to leave.” His face is deadly serious. Without waiting for a response he begins to pull me from the bed. How odd, he’s never this insistent.

“And why is that?” I ask, annoyed at hi—

My body writhes in pain as an unfamiliar force rips me from my bed. The air around me ripples and suddenly I’m in the street outside the inn. A large muscular woman holds me by the neck, an armored hand gripping my throat. 

Her scarred face twists into a menacing smile. “Gotcha.” 

Instinctually I lash out, fury bubbling through me. Razor sharp tendrils shoot from my small frame and whip against the woman’s slightly glowing armor. To my shock and horror, the pink threads bounce off the metal harmlessly. The hand around my throat tightens.

“Nice try, monster. Won’t be cutting through enchanted godsteel any time soon,” the burly woman says with a smirk. “And is that what you really look like? It’s a much too pretty face for something like you.” She raises a bushy eyebrow at me. Her gauntlet creaks as she rapidly increases the force behind her grip.

While I don’t feel any pain from the pressure on my neck, my human mind is still a bit panicked. I guess I still have some instincts from my last life, then. A strange sensation ripples through my skull before I suddenly lose all my senses. 

I quickly grow a new pair of eyes on my arms. I almost laugh when I see what happened. My head exploded under the pressure of the knight's grip, popped like an overfilled balloon, and the pink goo it’s made of splattered all over the woman’s face. My human form ruined, I drop the rest of it and fall to the ground in a pink puddle.

Before I can move away from my headbursting adversary, she plants a glowing boot into me. Something about the woman, or maybe her armor, makes shapeshifting impossible, so I just smack her ankle in indignation. Pay to win bullshit!

She snarls down at me, clearly incensed at getting my bodily fluids in her mouth. “Disgusting, like all your kin. Gods know how you got inside the barrier with how pathetically weak you are.” She spits onto the ground next to me.

Hey, lady! I’ve taken exactly zero damage from this fight! Even the burst head was little more than cosmetic. 

Her right hand starts to glow a deep black, shimmering as energy builds up around it. Uh-oh.

The magical energy coalesces around her hand, creating a fist sized sphere. After gaining sufficient power, the orb burst into the shape of a lotus, except made of glowing mana. One by one petals of black light slowly drift from her hand to land on my flesh. Wherever one of them touches me, my flesh evaporates instantly. Pain billows through my mind each time one makes contact, the magic feeling as if it’s consuming my soul directly. Writhing against her heel I try to escape my floral doom, but I can’t do anything as the flowery death eats away at me.

She lifts her foot for the final petal at the last second to not give me enough time to dodge the attack with my final sliver of flesh.

And then I feel nothing.

 

────────────

 

 

────────────

 

Why does dying hurt so bad? Not that I really experienced my first, but I’m going to assume it did last time, based on just how much agony this death entailed…

Hold on… I’m complaining. That means I’m alive! I crack open an eye, afraid of seeing a metal boot again. Thankfully, there’s no metal boot, instead my view is filled with a wall of pale flesh. After looking around some more, I realize whose pale flesh it is.

Betton is carrying me in a cupped hand as he runs through the woods. Tears are streaming down his face, and he’s obviously exhausted. Every few seconds he looks back over his shoulder, his face becoming paler when he does.

I grow myself an internal hearing organ, and immediately am bombarded by noise. Something is clearly chasing the boy, and it’s something huge. Trees crash every few seconds as whatever is following us doesn’t bother to move between the trunks, instead pushing through them. 

Betton needs help, and I’m the only one who can, or will. But how, I’m small enough to fit in his palm. I can also tell I can’t make myself bigger, it seems I’ve lost most of my mass. 

I focus and notice that I am regenerating, but extremely slowly. By the time I’m big enough to help the poor guy he’d be dead from starvation, let alone whatever is chasing him. That leaves me one option. Upgrades.

As fast as I can I open up the body menu, and search for anything with ‘regen’ in its name. After finding nothing useful for the situation, I start punching in other synonyms. It feels like an eternity passes before I get a hit.

This has to be it, it’s the only thing even close to what I want. Without thinking, I purchase the skill.

I don’t pay the notification any mind, instead putting my mind to recreating myself. By the time I have enough meat to make a small set of limbs, an overwhelming hunger starts to cloud my consciousness. Before I can do anything to harm Betton, I throw myself from his hand.

Betton looks behind him in horror as I fall, but doesn’t stop. Smart kid. The monster behind him is an absolute behemoth, a massive four legged thing covered in leaves and scars. Its head is missing any defining features besides a large mouth full of teeth the size of shortswords. Even without eyes it somehow catches sight of me falling to the forest floor. 

It pushes its lower jaw into the dirt as it runs, scooping me into its mouth. I’m quickly surrounded by a warm dark. The vivid sensations overwhelm me and my mind gives into the animalistic hunger grasping me.

 

────────────

 

“-ex… Alex!” A voice shakes me out of… What? 

I glance around, confused. Where am I? What’s going on? Last thing I remember, was that I was… really hungry… 

Memories of the last day barrage my mind, wiping away the mental gunk left from my hunger fugue. My eyes focus on the figure in front of me. Betton stands in front of me, staring down at my body in boredom. Seeing his despondent face brings me a sliver of joy, and causes me to return to reality. 

“Betton,” I say flatly.

The kid just nods at me. “Thanks for saving me.” 

…What is he talking— oh right! The monster was chasing him. I guess I did save him then. Whatever. “No problem.” I try to stand up, and instead just stretch out my eight thin legs. Right, not humanoid anymore. I let out a sigh as my body collapses into a dejected puddle.

“So… You want to watch after me while I conjure up my human form, or…?” I ask the teen.

He just shakes his head. “No way, not in the forest. What the hell would I do if something showed up? Hide them to death?” He pauses for a moment, rubbing his arms. “Plus, if that Scalpel finds out you’re alive, she’ll start after us immediately.”

“Scalpel?” I ask.

He nods. “That woman that killed you, she’s a Scalpel.” His whole frame shivers in fear at the thought of the buff woman. He’d probably shiver like that thinking of a woman in general, though.

“And what, is a Scalpel?” My tone is slightly annoyed, wishing the stupid kid would just tell me this stuff instead of making me pull it out of him.

“W-well,” he stutters, “they, uh… they ‘cut out tumors on society’.” Betton recites the phrase like he’s reading from a textbook. “They’re not officially named Scalpels, but that’s what everyone calls them.”

I snort. “So, why’d they go after me? Because I’m a monster, or because I like women?” Betton winces at the reminder of my sexuality.

“U-uh…” He rubs his arms again. “I think the monster bit. Usually people don’t get Scalpels sent after them for… the other thing.” He looks at his shoes, avoiding my gaze. 

“Usually?” Betton ignores my question, keeping his focus on the ground. I sigh, annoyed at all of this. “So there’s bigot cops running around with the license to kill on sight. Great.”

“I’m… not sure what a ‘cop’ is, but the rest of that is accurate.” 

I glare at the kid. “So, what do we do? I have no idea how she found me in the first place, and we don’t even have our gold anymore…” I rub my eyes with my tendrils. “What the hell, and why am I so weak to magic?” 

Betton coughs awkwardly. “W-well, I think it’s more like you’re freakishly immune to physical damage. That magic was high tier and it still took multiple hits to kill you.” A small smile plays over his face. Smugly he pulls a large bag from his pocket. “And I did grab our gold.”

Ignoring his pride over his sticky fingers, I decide to correct him. “Well, it didn’t kill me, since I’m still here.” 

Betton shakes his head at my words. “No, you were dead. There was nothing left of you at all. Nothing. And then a few minutes after you died, that tiny part of you I was carrying just popped into existence.” He makes a popping sound with his mouth for demonstration.

“But… why woul—” My question is interrupted by a system popup.

I quickly confirm, curious what possibly got fixed.

Laughter bubbles out of my gooey body, slipping through my manually created lips. The more I think of the absurdity of my situation, the harder I laugh. Eventually I feel my mind start to strain as the stress finally gets to me. 

I stare Betton in the eyes, making him jump. “You want to know why I came back to life?” He blinks slowly before hesitantly nodding. I smirk at the kid. “My system couldn’t reach god! So I just… stayed alive!” Again I feel my sanity strain as I start a second round of laughter.

Betton stares at me warily, fear clear on his face. I don’t care, I don’t care about any of this anymore. What’s the point of caring? I can’t die! I have no idea where Lina is, I’m stuck with some random kid. My body coils around and around, pulling against itself hard enough to tear apart. The destroyed flesh just melts and reforms, completely unharmed. The only reason I’m so strong, so special? Because I’m a fuckup, because my existence broke the world. Even in a place with magic, I’m such a mess that everything around me gets ruined.

What kind of life have I had? Suffered through highschool and transitioning, just to get kidnapped. I go through years of torment, and am forcibly detransitioned underground by quacks in lab coats. Then I wake up in some fantasy world as a monster? How insane is that? All of it? 

Wait… Is… is any of this real? Maybe… maybe I went crazy, in the facility. This, this could all be a delusion, or a fantasy my mind created to help me cope. Actually… What’s to say it was at the facility. Spikes form on my skin, stabbing their closest neighbors, my body becomes a battleground of needles piercing needles. If you think about it, being kidnapped and experimented on in a hidden lab… That’s just as insane as another world. Maybe… I’ve always been crazy. 

For some reason, the edges of my vision darken steadily, and eventually I pass out.