The goblin encampment was on the map, and Slime was nervous. Hope looked entirely unbothered, but he supposed a goddess wouldn’t be bothered by that sort of thing. She was just walking through the forest without a care in the world, and if he could sweat, he would be sweating bullets right about now. Goblins were easy to beat in games, but this was a whole other ball game. He had survived his first few quests, but those were easy, and he still hadn’t beaten the boar. He just had a shovel. What was a shovel going to do against a boar? He needed to level up to a sword as soon as possible. But, then what would he do with the shovel? Sell it? He had no idea. Maybe he could leave it at the church, since there was a graveyard there.

“What are the other levels like?” he asked Hope, just to pass the time, and she shrugged.

“Not sure,” she replied and squinted at the sun dappling through the leaves. “I was banished to this church on the starter level.”

“Did people ever pray to you?” he asked quietly, and she smiled.

“Occasionally. Most of them didn’t know who I was, but I think they found some comfort in me,” she replied, and he nodded a few times.

“Why did you randomly get a body?” he asked, and she gave him a weird look.

“Because I could,” she replied, and he felt like that was a lie. He wasn’t sure why he thought it was a lie, but he felt like it was a lie. But, what did he know? The machinations of a goddess was not something he could understand. He didn’t want to understand divinity. That seemed like it was an opening for madness.

“I miss my apartment,” he said out of nowhere. “And a bed.”

“You’ve been here a grand total of two days,” she said. “I hardly think that’s enough time to miss anything.”

“Well, I still do,” he replied, a bit offended. “And I’m sure I’ll only miss it even more.”

“You’ll scarcely remember it,” she said quietly, and he went quiet for a moment. “Cherish the memory while you still have it.”

“Yeah… Okay,” he said, and wondered how she tied into the whole tower thing. Was she made by the system? Or was something else going on? How did he ask that? “Do you… Did you ever dream of being mortal like this?”

She sighed and looked to the sky, squinting at the sun shining through the leaves.

“No,” she replied. “I always admired mortals, of course. They had such hope for a better future, getting up with the grit of cobblestones in their hair, spitting out a tooth as they prepared for another row. They always were willing to go down fighting.”

Slime was silent, and she sighed quietly.

“That’s the essence of hope. Refusing to give up, even when the odds are stacked against you,” she said, and stepped over a log. “That’s what it means to me. I always loved mortals and their spirit. I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for that spirit. But… but, no, I never wanted to be mortal. Not like this.”

“Is that why you’re joining me?” Slime asked. “Do you think you can get your immortal form back?”

“I hope,” she said quietly, and Slime’s heart clenched. “I want freedom for my people. And if I have to become hope again to get it, I will.”

Become hope again. Slime wasn’t entirely sure what that meant, but he thought it might be important. She was laying out deliberate clues for him, but he wasn’t nearly smart enough to parse through them, only know that they were there. It was a little frustrating, but he supposed that was the purpose of gods. To frustrate mortals and inspire them in equal measures. He didn’t understand it, but she seemed more real than the God of his childhood like this, with her busted knuckles and dirty, tangled hair. She was looking to the sky, and the sun was shining down on her face, illuminating her in a halo.

Maybe the divine was found in the mundane, he thought. Maybe this was what divinity actually looked like: a dirty little girl fighting to free her people.

There was a crack in the forest, and both of them whirled, her drawing her blade as he brandished his shovel. Slowly, multiple forms emerged from the trees.

There was a teenage boy, muscular, with a heavy war hammer over his shoulder. A man with two knives belted at his waist, and another teenage girl with a bow and quiver of arrows. A tall woman with a staff, and a bunch of assorted men with a variety of weapons, looking like they were here to cause trouble. Slime eyed them warily, and the teenage boy let the hammer thunk on the ground and leaned on it.

“I see you stole our XP,” he said lazily, and Slime hesitated. “Oh, don’t look so dumb. You took out the advance unit for our guild.”

“You say ‘stole XP’ like you were planning on taking their XP,” Slime shot back, and the boy laughed.

“And if I was?” he asked, and Slime hesitated before he glanced at Hope. “I see you picked up a straggler. Keeping some brat safe? You can’t even keep yourself safe.”

“That remains to be seen,” Slime said with as much bluster as he could manage, but there were at least ten of them, and he was pretty sure he was just going to die on level one at this point. Great.

“Whatever. I’m bored of this. Leave the killing blow for me,” the teenage boy said with a yawn, and the man with two knives darted forward. Before he could land a blow on Slime, Hope leapt forward and blocked his first attack, cutting off both hands with a neat twist of her blade.

“You’re not getting close,” she hissed, and the teenage boy’s eyes narrowed.

“Oh? A challenger?” he asked, sounding a lot like the cannibal king, and the man with the knives belatedly dropped to his knees and screamed, blood spurting out of his severed wrists. With one swing, the boy crushed his head. Brain matter flew, and Slime blinked in shock. Brain matter was scattered all over the forest floor, and if Slime had stomach bile, he would be throwing everything up.

“Alright, little girl. Let’s dance,” the boy said, and Hope dropped down low. The hammer went flying at her, and she leapt over it and rolled, coming to her feet and slashing at him. A wound opened on his leg, and he grunted in pain before he lifted the hammer up and slammed it down. She rolled out of the way and lunged. He twisted just in time, and the sword glanced off the leather armor over his chest, scoring a line in the material, but not drawing blood.

The woman leveled her staff on Slime, and Slime threw up a barrier of slime. A brilliant burst of offensive magic exploded against it, and he lashed out with his slime, grabbing the staff and ripping it from her hands. He snapped it over his knee, and she screamed and drew a sword before she swung at him. He ducked under it, lashed out with his web, and took her legs out from under her as the fight with Hope and the presumed guild leader raged.

The archer took aim and fired, and Slime bent in a backbend, completely folded in half as the arrow whizzed harmlessly over his head. He lashed out again, snatching the bow away and sending it skittering over the forest floor, and by then, the woman had climbed to her feet. She swung the sword at him, and he leapt back just as Blue launched up and smacked her in the face.

“Blue, be careful!” he cried, and Blue bounced back behind him. Her nose was broken and bleeding now, and she snarled at him.

“You’ll pay for that,” she growled, and Slime held out his hands.

“Hey, lady, I don’t want no smoke. I just want to mind my business and---”

She swung the sword at him again, and this time, it cut open his shirt. Dammit, this shirt was brand new, what the fuck. Thank gods he had a sewing kit in one of his inventory slots. He danced back, and she paused, realizing that had done no damage.

“Oh, for fucks sake,” she swore. “Eddie! He doesn’t take piercing damage. Stop playing with the girl and splatter him!”

The hammer came out of nowhere, splattering Slime across it and nailing him into a tree that shattered under the impact. Slime was stuck to the hammer, peeling himself off in pieces, and Eddie, apparently, swore in annoyance.

“No bludgeoning damage, either!” he cried, and Slime got fed up with the whole situation. He swept up the shovel and smacked Eddie over the head while he was still distracted, and Eddie went down, stunned. Slime spun the shovel around and blocked a swing of a sword with the handle before he twisted, smacking the man in the head. He went down, and then it was just chaos.

There was fighting left and right, and Hope was ruthless, dancing away and darting here and there, severing limbs and cutting off heads. Slime was smacking people around with the shovel, which was actually a really handy weapon, now that he was using it, and he found that he was getting annoyed with all of this.

He dropped the shovel. There were five left. The archer, the mage, Eddie, and two men. They hadn’t been on Hope’s level of skill, and were clearly unused to fighting against a shovel.

Slime lashed out with all of his tendrils. They smacked into all of them, and Slime spewed sticky goo all over them, and they he slapped the tendrils together, bundling them up in a neat pile on the ground.

“Wow. That was easy,” he said, and then shot Hope a grin. “What do we do with them?”

There were no guards to take them to. There was no enforcement in this world, and he had no idea how to handle them. Hope hesitated, clearly unsure herself, and Slime looked down.

Well, if they got eaten by wild animals, that wasn’t his problem, he decided.

“Leave us alone,” he said, like that was going to do anything. “I have literally no beef with you, so stop making problems where there are none.”

“Fuck you,” Eddie spat. “You killed my girlfriend.”

Oh. Slime blinked a few times, and then he tilted his head.

“And your girlfriend tried to kill me. Where does that leave me? Should I just lay down so she can murder me?”

“I’m going to kill you,” Eddie hissed as he struggled against the bindings around his body, and Slime sighed.

“No, you’re not,” he said, sympathy oozing from his voice. “Sorry about your girlfriend. You should have shown up for the burial if she was that important to you.”

“Fuck you,” Eddie cried, and Slime dropped to a crouch in front of him.

“Are you realizing now?” he asked. “That this is real, and real people are dying in your quest to get more XP?”

Eddie glared at him, and then he spat at him. Slime reared back, and the spit fell in the grass.

“Richie didn’t deserve to die,” Slime said quietly and straightened up, looking around the forest. That had produced quite a racket. Where were the goblins? Honestly, he wouldn’t be that upset if the goblins killed them while they were tied up like this, but…

Wasn’t the whole reasoning behind him killing the first group was because they would only continue to kill people?

He eyed Eddie. They were tied up, incapacitated. They wouldn’t… they wouldn’t be able to defend themselves if he killed them. At least with his first murders, they had a fighting chance. Sort of. If he killed these people, though, he would be the villain. Point blank. He wasn’t about to go on a Punisher roleplay. That was just… gross, he thought distantly.

He didn’t want this world to change him. He didn’t want to become someone he didn’t recognize. He wanted to prove you could remain a good person, fundamentally, because if he didn’t, he didn’t know what he would do.

He truly didn’t know what he would do.