Slime made his way through the forest. It was dark out, and he was tired. If he completed this quest, he should have enough money to sleep in an inn, but he had seen an abandoned church on the side of the road, so he should be able to sleep there. He pushed past a branch, lifting it up and ducking under it, and continued on through the forest. It was quiet. There were crickets singing, and an owl hooting. The sky was dark, speckled in stars he didn’t recognize, and it was still.

He was in a nightmare, but at least it was a pretty nightmare.

Twigs and dead leaves crunched under his footsteps, and he paused at the sound of a running stream. There was the sound of splashing, and he approached it in silence as someone sloshed through the water. There was the sound of harsh panting, and he tilted his head in interest. He came out of the forest, and stopped at the edge of the water. Someone was collapsed on the other side of the bank, and he stepped into the stream, making his way over to him.

“Hey, are you okay?” he called, and the man looked up. It was Richie. He was pale and shaking, and there was a gaping wound on his side, sluggishly leaking blood. Slime stopped in the middle of the stream, and Richie held up his blade, shaking horribly.

“Are you going to kill me?” he asked, and Slime’s brows furrowed.

“Why would I kill you?” he asked in confusion. “I don’t even have a sword.”

Richie was shaking, his dark skin pale and drawn, his afro in a mess, and then he lowered his sword.

“Right,” he choked out, and Slime held up his hands.

“Did… someone try to kill you?” he asked, and Richie nodded. “Okay. Okay. I think… I think you should heal by the time the sun comes up. Can you hold on that long?”

That was something someone mentioned about the Tower at some point. If you managed to survive an injury overnight, you healed with the sun rising. Returners kept that particular trait. It was nifty.

“I’m…” Richie gasped, and then he slumped forward, clutching at the gut wound. “I’m going to die, aren’t I?”

“No, you’re not going to die,” Slime said as he made his way through the water to him. “Let me just… Try something.”

Slime made a liquid slurry out of his hands, and then he concentrated. He could already make his slime sticky, so he smeared it over the wound and sealed it over the edges of it. It stuck, and he sat down next to Richie.

“So…” he said, and Richie slumped down next to him, breathing hard as the stream continued to run past them.

“They wanted to kill me for the XP,” Richie muttered. “Apparently, you get more XP in PVP. Did not know that.”

“Oh,” Slime said softly, and Richie looked over at him.

“You were smart to avoid them,” he said bitterly, and Slime pursed his lips.

“It’s not a bad thing to trust people,” he said gently, and Richie grunted.

“Yeah, well, I could have shown a little more sense and not trusted a little white girl,” he said, and Slime was quiet. Yeah. He probably could have shown more sense there.

“There’s an abandoned church on the outskirts of town. Do you want to head there for cover?” Slime asked, and Richie panted harshly.

“Yeah. Let’s go,” he said and came to his feet, stumbling slightly. Slime came to his feet and followed along behind him. The two of them pushed through the stream and came out on the other end, and Slime pulled up his map and eyed it. The town was east of here, and it was already dark out. It may make more sense to sleep in the forest.

“Okay, it’s this way,” Slime said and headed off, and Richie followed behind him, clutching his side and limping along, pale and freaked out. Slime walked slowly for him as Blue hopped along next to them, and they slid down a hill, the sound of a waterfall just behind them. Twigs cracked and leaves crunched, and Slime made his way through the forest.

“What’s your name?” Richie finally asked, and Slime glanced at him.

“Slime,” he replied, and Richie blinked.

“Really?”

“Yep. Picked it myself,” Slime replied, and glanced down at his transparent hands. “It looks like the system has a sense of humor. I’m going to be like this for the rest of my life.”

“Does it freak you out?” Richie asked, and Slime hummed.

“Not really? I got a free top surgery, so I can’t complain that much,” he replied as his feet crunched in the loam.

“Oh… You’re…” Richie trailed off, and Slime smiled at him.

“Trans, yeah,” he replied, and Richie was silent. He may be a transphobe, but that wasn’t going to bother Slime that much. He needed help. And Slime could help him.

They continued in silence after that, Richie not saying a damn word, and Slime pushed through the forest.

“Does it bother you?” Slime asked, and Richie was quiet.

“My little brother thinks he’s trans. I told him he was crazy,” he said, and then--- “Now I kind of regret that. I may not get out of here alive.”

“Oof,” Slime muttered, and ducked under a low hanging branch. “Well, there’s only way out of here.”

Beating the tower. You had to make it through all ninety nine levels to qualify, and Slime wasn’t looking forward to that. It sounded terrifying to him. He may just stay here for the rest of his life. It wasn’t like he had anything waiting for him back home.

“My parents disowned me,” he said quietly. “Told me it was fine if I was a dyke, but they weren’t going to have a tranny in the family.”

“I…” Richie trailed off. “I have trans friends. I just didn’t want my little brother to be one.”

“It sounds like you didn’t have trans friends, just trans people that tolerated you,” Slime said, unsympathetic, and Richie winced.

“Yeah,” he muttered. “Probably.”

“Why didn’t you want your little sister to be one?” Slime asked as he stepped over a fallen log, and Richie was quiet.

“It’s hard to be a black woman,” he said softly. “I don’t know how much harder it is to be a black trans woman.”

That was fair. He went about it all the wrong way, but it was fair. Black trans women had it hard, Slime thought. They had it very hard. He was a trans man of color, and even he had it pretty hard. He couldn’t imagine being a black trans woman.

“Even so, you shouldn’t have dealt with it that way,” Slime said gently, and Richie blew out a breath.

“Yeah. Yeah, I know,” he said, and then he was quiet. “He’s… she’s… she’s going to remember me in some of my worst moments.”

Slime was silent, and they reached a low cliff. Slime hopped down, and Richie climbed down gingerly after him.

They reached the edge of the forest and came out into the clearing with the hitoke herbs, and Slime made his way through the clearing, the tall grass brushing against his knees. There were flowers popping out of it, and it was beautiful. The moon was shining down on them, and he tilted back his head to breathe in the sight of it.

“I lived in a city. We never got to see the stars like this,” Slime said softly, and Richie followed his gaze to stare up at the stars.

“Humans really ruin everything, don’t they?” Richie asked softly, and Slime smiled.

“Not everything,” he said and turned his head back down to push through the tall grass. “The church is just ahead---”

There was a whistling sound, and Richie made a choked off sound. Slime whirled around, and Richie took a staggering step forward and collapsed, an arrow sticking out between his shoulder blades. Slime stared at the blood boiling up, and then he rushed to his side.

“Richie?!” he asked in alarm, and Richie stared up at him.

“I didn’t get to tell her I was sorry…” he said, and scrambled for Slime’s hand. “I---”

He choked, and Slime inspected the arrow.

“You’re gonna be okay, just hold on---” he said, but he knew he wasn’t. The arrow was in so deep. It had clearly pierced his heart.

“I’m… I’m sorry,” Richie gasped, clinging to Slime’s hand. “Can you… find her and tell her I’m sorry? Her name is… Emerald Smith…”

“You’re going to tell her you’re sorry yourself,” Slime said, and another arrow sailed out of the forest, hitting Slime in the shoulder and piercing straight through, leaving a hole in his shirt. It sailed through, and no pain flared. The slime just came back together, and Blue rose up, hopping towards the source of the disturbance.

“Blue, no!” Slime called, and Richie went limp. He was dead, his eyes wide and unfocused, and Slime stared at him for a long, long moment. He didn’t look dead, but it was unmistakable. It was unmistakable, and Slime could only think that he had a little sister waiting on him to come home.

Slime staggered to his feet and faced the forest. Shapes were emerging from it, coming out of the shadow of it, and the archer, a small teenage girl, smirked at him.

“Two for one, huh? Looks like we’re doing good today,” the man with a sword said, and Slime stared at him. “You get bonus XP for a mutant, too.”

“You killed him,” Slime said, and the man paused. “He just wanted to get home to his sister.”

“Oh? You think that sort of thing matters here?” the man asked, and Slime set his jaw. “It doesn’t. What matters is XP.”

“You’re a NEET,” Slime snapped. “How could you just kill someone?”

“Hey, if we want to survive in the higher levels, we gotta level up, too,” the man said, and the girl, Lisa, from the marketplace, set her staff in the ground. The staff glowed brightly, and she tilted her head.

“Whatever. He clearly doesn’t take normal damage, so we’ve got to get creative,” she said, and then the staff lit up like a firework. Fire roared at Slime, and they reacted, throwing up a wall of slime. It burned through it, and they lashed out with the slime, tendrils of slime smacking out from their whole body, and they traveled through the air and smacked into their faces. Slime yanked the tendrils down, and they all face planted into the ground. All five of them writhed, unable to breathe, and Slime stared at them.

Did they want to kill them? They could suffocate them right now, but…

Wouldn’t that make them no better than them? They didn’t know what to do. This was kill or be killed, but they were all thrashing around. The man came to his feet, grabbed his sword, and rushed Slime, and they stared blankly at the sword sticking out of their stomach. It did no damage, and hey, wasn’t it a little weird they couldn’t take damage? They assumed fire did damage to them, and honestly, smart of Lisa to attack with that right off the bat---

Oh. They had a sword sticking out of their stomach.

The man ripped up, and their body separated, but it just came back together. Their shirt slipped off, and great, now they didn’t have a shirt.

It occurred to them that if they didn’t kill this party now, they would keep killing newbies. That was a problem. They didn’t want to kill anyone, but…

They were running out of air. The girl shot fire at Slime, and they blocked it with a wave of slime. Blue was looking between Slime and the party, and the man slashed at Slime, only for their body to come back together. He started hacking at them, and they gradually realized they couldn’t take hacking and slashing damage. That was… a little weird? Why were they so OP? That didn’t make any sense…

They needed to kill them, they realized, and they felt like they needed to vomit. The man collapsed to the ground, unable to breathe, and Lisa reached for her staff. Slime lashed out with a tendril of slime and batted the staff away, sending it skittering across the ground, and the archer tried to stagger to her feet and take a potshot at Slime.

This was for the best, they told themself. These people were killing newbies, and an arrow sailed through them. It sailed off into the distance, and Slime swallowed.

They thought they were going to be sick. This was such a slow way to go. The archer collapsed again, and slowly, all five of them stopped moving.

Slime waited, knowing they were just unconscious, and waited. And waited, because they had committed to this. They had killed Richie. They had just… killed Richie. For no reason except XP. People were more important than that. They felt a little bad about killing teenagers, but there was no justice in this world.

So much for their thoughts on prison abolition, they thought sourly as they finally peeled away the slime and sucked it back into their body. They were all dead, and they walked up to the bodies and dropped down to rifle through their pockets. They pulled out their coin purses, which were hefty, and then they turned back to the church.

They didn’t want to go find an inn with their blood money.

They would come back in the morning to bury Richie. And the rest of them. They would have to buy a shovel.

They had… just killed five people, they realized, and their gut twisted. They didn’t like that. They didn’t like that at all.