It was the next day. I found myself outside the inn, just watching the crowds of people passing by. From humans, to ogres, to the occasional crustecar, kobold, and more. The variety was surprising for a part of town this wealthy, but that was because we were at the frontier, and at a recently expanded town at that. The more warlike species, at least in function, had a stronger presence here.
I knew that they were going to try and retake The Endless Dive soon. It was territory previously lost in the ill-thought-out war against the barrier range, and it was only now decades later that they were ready to properly integrate the wonderzone again. The Angelore Empire truly moved at a snail’s pace at tis, in part due to the immortal nature of its highest leaders, but also because of how overextended it was. There were enemies on all sides, and it was stupid how they even tried to add the dwarves and harpies onto their plates on top of all that. New Grandera probably would’ve never even co to be if they didn’t encourage these largely neutral races to support the budding nation.
I didn’t mind how incompetent they were though. I wish they moved slower! I wish they never reached my secret base!
Now I’d have to destroy it, rather than let it be taken by soone else…
I sniffed, but swallowed down the tears for now. My makeup was pretty fucking well made, but I still risked revealing the blood-red skin underneath my helt if I cried. It might also ss with the contacts that made look like so common human.
"Hey, Haell. Are you alright?" My mom asked with a reassuring hand on my arm. Her voice was raised a little to be heard over the clamor of the passing crowds and their shopping. There was little haggling going on, it just wasn’t in the culture of Angelore. The prices were expected to be displayed properly and be a more static thing.
Regardless of how I felt about the empire, I actually preferred that. I could haggle if needed, but it wasn’t sothing I particularly enjoyed either.
"I'm fine, Mom. Just a little... confused, I guess." It wasn't that I was overwheld by civilization after having lived in the isolated forests for literal years, but I wasn't... unaffected either.
It was just... strange. People were strange. The way they could just ignore each other in passing, the way they could recognize one another on the streets. So much was cramd behind the tall walls, when the world outside was so vast. The borders of the empire were so vast. Yet how much of that claim could they truly hold and defend, when so much of that land was but monster-infested wilderness?
"Moonwash. How about you?" I asked my friend. "You ca with and ended up isolating yourself for over a year because of it. Are you alright?" My conversation with Luine was still fresh in my mind.
"Yes. I'm fine. I had the best company during it."
"O-oh?" I scratched my head with a silly grin on my face. "Well, that's great! But how is it, to be back in civilization?"
“I can see similar principles in design, but the layout of the place is different from Latarus. The people are different, in both composition of species, and in attitude. There is no tree wall, but instead a stone wall. That does seem more effective.”
“I would imagine so, but then again the defenders on the tree wall were really high level, and I reckon our hotown would put up a better fight against fliers or singular super strong enemies.”
“I see. That’s very interesting.” Her dry delivery might confuse so, but I knew that she ant it genuinely.
I patted her on the shoulder and then rushed ahead.
“Co on guys, let’s go!”
I explored the town of Borail with my parents and my best friend. Baston had gone off with his ‘plants’ to have so fun of his own while we were in town. anwhile, Luine was off being an upstanding citizen by herself again, so I wished her luck with whatever totally legal and non-treasonous activities she was involving herself with.
We started our tour with the wealthier parts of town because we were already there. I had a wonderful breakfast of warsymbol at at a place run by a kobold, and then we explored the various shops and boutiques. I bought new clothes and accessories for myself, intrigued by the designs that I hadn’t worn in a long ti. My wardrobe was full of Moonwash’s creations at this point, with the materials all supplied by . That was a very satisfying process, but it wasn’t so bad to experience this once again now that I was back. It was just a sha that I couldn’t actually use most of what I bought in public, because I still had to protect so of my largest secrets. Few dresses would look good if my head was still wearing a helt to hide my horns, so plate armor would have to remain my best friend. I couldn't wear what I wanted, and I had to dress to hide, because my enemies were many, and they were already suppressing my actions without even knowing of .
A growl rumbled out of my throat as a subtle stream of nace aura oozed out of . I imdiately retracted back my hostility and took a deep breath. There were people that had stopped in their tracks, but no one had taken notice of what happened.
I breathed a sigh of relief.
Luine and I might have argued intensively about being careless last night, but I wasn’t actually going to wear clothing that would reveal myself to be a demon. Soday I would be strong enough to stride through anywhere boldly and unimpeded, but I was well aware that today was not that day.
“This is a gift for you, Haell.” I raised a brow at Moonwash when she handed a bundle of flowers. A human mage had made them to her exacting standards, in a process that was bewitching to watch by itself. I truly loved magic.
The bouquet itself was beautiful. It was as if a single plant just grew into the perfect shape for it, which was exactly what happened. Even the flower wrap was natural, borne out of a material that felt both like a leaf and a petal.
“Thank you, Moonwash.” I accepted her gift, and took a good sniff of the wonderful floral scent. In the past, I would’ve thought that she just didn’t know what these gestures ant, but I’d co to learn that I was very wrong about that.
I found that I didn’t mind. I was happy for it, even. I wasn’t sure yet how I felt about her myself, but monts like this were a treasure all the sa.
My fragile calm was shattered when my parents began loudly gossiping behind .
“Look, look, Rallem! Our baby’s first romance!”
“I was actually beginning to think Luine might have just been ssing with us when she said sothing happened between them.”
“Clearly not! Hey Haell, you can talk to us about it! Where do you want the painting of this mont hung!?”
“Mooooommmmm!!!” I whined and left the store.
~~~
We toured the newer parts of town co afternoon. There was a very obvious divide as the walls of the village had only recently been torn down and extended farther than before. Magic and Mutations sped up that sort of work significantly.
The streets here were full of more people than in the older parts of Borail, yet there were more empty plots of land. The buildings stood strong and imposing, if quite a bit more bare, and missing much of the artworks and decorations that normally adorned the faces of Angelorian architecture. That was honestly sothing that I loved about the culture.
The people here were of more varied species, and they seed to mingle better instead of congealing into groups of their sa kin like what usually happened. There was a sense of camaraderie and excitent of being on the frontier.
I understood. Living beyond the frontier had been an amazing five years for .
For lunch, I grabbed so skewers, kebabs, crepes, and whatever else were being sold in the many stalls that were open. They were delicious, they were cheap, and health concerns beca less and less of a problem as one grew in levels, especially in the flesh Mutation. I could still gain weight, which was actually part of the intense and complicated process of becoming larger than the species norm, but I didn’t yet know if I wanted to go that route. I was already plenty strong, and that sort of size resulted in far less agility and stamina overall.
“That’s a lot of cheap fantastreel,” Moonwash comnted when we passed by the new forging district. “I’ll go buy so.”
Fantastreel was more expensive here than the other continents despite how there should be larger regenerating reserves Grandera than anywhere else. This was, once again, because of how the impenetrable barrier range had beco barred from us. The dwarves and harpies now refused to trade with the Empire, and were instead in support of New Grandera. It was hard to bla them after what happened.
“How is there so many cheap fantastreel for sale here?” Moonwash asked.
“There was a viable mine discovered in the next town over,” the human clerk explained. “That’s why our prices are so low.”
“That’s nice,” Moonwash said, then turned toward us. “Can we get so raw ore from there? I’d like to get more experience with starting from raw ore. I should have enough money for a couple of crates.”
“Sure,” my dad agreed, “We can have it delivered to Latarus. Your friends have maintained the Harvester Ho well.”
~~~
The next months passed by way too fast. We moved and sold the last of our stock in the secret base, and then we also shipped ho many of our personal effects and appliances. We would be torching this place to the ground soon, and Elfrafim had still not returned to give the last ingredient I needed for my next evolution. It was hard to worry for her safety, but it was notoriously difficult to get ahold of any hekaton blood. I didn’t know if even the crazy powerful elf could pull it off.
Today, I found myself sitting solemnly in our living room. We’d decided to leave a fair amount of furniture and decorations here, to have them die along with the secret base, to have our ho be alive until the end. It still felt a lot more empty than before, the secret base had nearly returned to being a re cavern once more. There were just too many things we didn’t want to part with, like the many artworks of Moonwash that had been put on display. They depicted the ti that we spent here, and they would remind us of this era again in the future, wherever we end up.
“We’ve had so great tis here. I know now that it might not have been the sa for all of you, but it was truly so of my best years.”
Baston, Moonwash, and Luine were all here with . The three people I’d spent the most ti with in the past years.
“I don’t know where I’d rank it,” Baston said, grabbing more candy from the table, “but it felt great to be out of the empire’s influence for once. Life was so simple here. It’s the simplest it’s ever been.”
“It started with Haell doing sothing that by all rights should have killed her, which sohow escalated into this.” Luine twirled her dagger around, then ate the slice of cake dangling from its tip. “I don’t think I could have had this experience anywhere else, and I will forever brag about it once Haell is strong and famous. ‘Hey I trained that angelslayer!’ So you better give those bragging rights, Haell! You hear !?”
“Hell yeah! You got it!” I gave her a thumbs up, pleased as punch with all the things that my friend said about .
“I’ve learned many things here. I love the experints that I got to do, and the new possibilities Haell has shown us.” Moonwash grabbed a piece of strongberry and began to eat. Strongberry was like strawberry, but very big. It could be found in rare pockets in the forest around The Endless Dive. “My leveling speed rose even higher, and I have reached my first level 30 Mutation just the other day.”
Luine sucked in a breath. “You kids are ridiculous. That’s really fucking fast.”
“I managed to earn a few levels myself,” Baston smiled. “Their generation will overtake us, but I’m happy to have at least reached Fiya’s projected lifespan. That's a relief.”
“What? Don’t want her to be stolen away?” Luine smirked.
“You know it.”
I snorted out a laugh, and so did the others. Baston was the last Piss Hunter who should be saying that, bar his wife Fiya. It made the joke all the funnier.
We continued to reminisce so more, throwing in the odd jest here and there. Perhaps soday, five ager years would be nothing to , once I was truly immortal. But I vowed to rember this place, these people, and this ti, even should I persist beyond the universe’s end.
~~~
“Paint Ball!” I suddenly shouted one day when we were out fishing at our usual river.
“What is it this ti, Haell?” Luine asked, exasperated.
I explained my idea to them, including concepts from my old world.
“I like it,” Moonwash said. “Stories from Earth are always fascinating.”
“Are we sure we want to ss up our ho in the end?” Baston asked.
“Of course!” I answered. “It’d be a far better send-off than our dreary fucking mood!”
Moonwash agreed with , while Luine was indifferent. The forr imdiately went off to experint with the creation of plastic, an endeavor which I heartily helped her with.
I had no actual clue how they were made, so Moonwash had to make up the thods all by herself. She sampled the sap of different trees until we found sothing rubber-like, that of the managuar tree deep in the nearby wonderzone. We also harvested so rageid coral from down the Oceanlake itself, a material that aided in the bonding process when crushed into powder form. It was by far the most dangerous thing to harvest because it was underwater, but we mainly made do by creating water rituals that could cut them from all the way up on the surface, and then catching the sliced-off pieces with so custom-made fishing rods.
Moonwash figured out a passable recipe, and then mixed and cooked the necessary ingredients. A disgusting goo was created, which had to be properly shaped, then crushed, pressurized, and then left out to dry. The resulting product would be a soft jelly-like substance once it sets, not tough by any ans, but it wouldn’t crumble with a single misplaced touch. The force required to break it was similar to common plastic.
I made all sorts of funny and ‘unsafe’ shapes using the sli-thing; from angels and palaces in various stages of lting, to body parts usually kept private in polite society. I showed off all my work and my friends laughed at so while making polite noises at others. I then swiped most of my masterpieces for my own personal use later.
While I was doing all that important work, Moonwash made nearly all of what we actually needed. That was very nice of her.
“Good work, Moonwash!”
“Thanks. You too. I like that one.” She pointed at the smushed eyeball that I made. The goo was honestly very very hard to shape, which was why most of what I made ended up looking like grim abstract pieces. I definitely couldn't make them as fine and thin as Moonwash could.
“I call it the ‘Eye Don’t See You!’”
“That’s a good na.”
“Very.”
~~~
“Co one, co all!” I tossed a paint balloon at Moonwash’s head before I shouted my next words. “Let’s begin!”
Moonwash only stared blankly at as brown paint splattered across her face. That caused to double over in laughter, which quickly proved to be a mistake as my friend imdiately got her revenge. She jabbed a blob of blue right in the middle of my forehead, and then followed it up with even brighter colors. I shrieked and ran away, tossing my retaliation at her as I made so distance. Luine and Baston betrayed next, adding their payload to Moonwash’s. I was a rainbow ss by the ti I made it to cover, and so would the couch be painted sickeningly bright as it valiantly took the next hits in my stead.
The safety it offered did not last long. The lobbed projectiles that followed forced out of cover as they arced down at from above. My friends had discovered the beauty of airstrikes and indirect fire.
“Stop! You can’t just gang up on ee!!!” I complained as they did just that. I ran and threw more paint balloons of my own, hitting them many tis in a row until they looked like very colorful zombies. I was in even more dire straits as my vision was gravely impeded by the ti I made it under the protection of the trusty dining table.
What followed was so fort building as Baston ended up in my team. We created walls out of the remaining shelves and chairs, raining down paint on the other team that did the exact sa team.
Many more alliances would be forged in paint today, and many more would be broken. Such was the cutthroat politics of paint fucking ball.
At tis I found myself huddled together with Moonwash, fighting against forces that we knew were totally going easy on us. Other tis Baston cheated by using nature magic, taking on the remaining three of us by himself with paintball-lobbing vines. Another ti Moonwash betrayed by dumping a whole barrel of paint balloons in my face. I tripped and fell over myself in search of vengeance, and then I found joy in the sliding around that followed. I decided to just continue doing that on purpose, staring up at how colorful our base had beco, all the way to the ceiling. I’d found the aning of life, I abandoned revenge, now uncaring of the paint wars that continued to rage on around .
And then I brought the artillery. I made seesaw-like catapults and then jumped on them, launching projectiles of paint indiscriminately. May they land wherever they may, and woe be whover was hit.
I resorted to trickery, I fell to banditry. I stole their barrels of paintball from under their noses, finding the joy in using what was not mine!
Luine ran, she went all out and beca untouchable to any of us. Moonwash hid within one of the rooms out back, before coming out with a whole ass ritual. It sent several barrels of paint balloons raining down upon the entire space along with a strong gust of wind. I rolled around the very low-quality paint already pooling on the ground, and then I charged, barreling into my friends and tackling them into the floor. I got dirty, they got dirty, the house got dirty. We all got dirty and it was so much fucking fun.
The chaos continued and continued and continued until we had no more paint to dye the walls with. We all collapsed in a pile, splashing on the paint that had collected in the very center of the vast hall. Tears graced our cheeks, but predominantly from happiness this ti.
Today we had fun, tomorrow we’d rember what happened today, and the day after that we would depart, leaving nothing behind.
EPILOGUE:
“I have an idea,” Moonwash said evenly, and then promptly slashed my palm.
“AaaaAAAaAaaAAaAHHHhHhHHHHHhh!!!”
She suddenly pulled back, a frown on her face. “Haell, I’m sorry. Are you okay?”
“Oh shit, I only ant it as a joke, Moonwash! Don’t feel bad!”
“Are you sure?” Her expression shifted back to neutral. “Does it not hurt?”
“Oh, it definitely does.” I nodded. “But you know that already! You couldn’t have seriously expected that slashing wouldn’t hurt, did you?”
“That is true. It is just that I’ve done it many tis for our experints so I thought you were fine with it, especially when you gave your hand.”
“And you were correct! I am fine with it!”
“Really? But didn’t you just say that it did hurt?” She paused for a mont, which I knew ant she was thinking. “Is this one of those things where you’re just trying to make feel better?”
“No, no. Not at all. It is painful, of course. You slashed my hand and drew blood, lots of it. But that’s nothing to , I’m used to at least this much. I only shrieked like a banshee earlier because I thought it would be funny.”
“I didn’t find it funny. I still don’t.”
I clutched my heart with my bleeding hand, before falling and writhing on the floor. “You have killed , Moonwash. This is the one pain I cannot cope with. I have died.”
“Oh no,” she deadpanned.
~~~
“They’re here,” Luine said. Her voice ca from outside the entrance to our paint-riddled base. I and Moonwash had just been filling up balloons with my blood before she arrived.
“We have to go,” Luine continued, striding towards us. “I found their forward scouts. The expedition must be getting close. We’ve dallied for too long already.”
Instead of sighing, I t Moonwash’s eyes as we gave each other a firm nod. Baston stood up with a small pack on his back already, anwhile Moonnwash stashed away the balloons that we’d already filled. The cut on my palm had to be reapplied many tis throughout the process because it just kept on healing back up thanks to my regen heart.
We didn’t have any more luggage, the majority of our things had been safely sent back to our first ho long ago.
“RESPECT!” I shouted as I stood at the mouth of our hidden cave. “You have been a ho to us! You have let us rest within your confines! You were an ally in all the battles that we’ve had!”
I took a deep breath, and then released it slowly as my posture relaxed.
“Now rest.”
Baston and Luine looked at oddly, but Moonwash imdiately followed in my lead.
“You were our ho for the past few years. I learned so much as I experinted and forged by taking advantage of your anities. I decorated your walls, I created so much art in your embrace. Your final form is a collaboration of the love and camaraderie between us.”
Moonwash paused, taking a good look at the rainbow-covered walls below the stairs leading down. “You have been a wonderful friend and companion to us. Now rest.”
We both looked at Baston and Luine expectantly. Baston gave a little sigh and scratched his head.
“Well, uh. I made plants inside you. I hid you away with trees and made you pretty. It was fun, to just be away from all the expectations of society. I truly appreciate the ti we had together. Now rest.”
He had started off unsure, but his words beca more confident as he neared the finish of his parting speech.
Now it was Luine’s turn. She glanced at Baston, and then shrugged.
“You have hidden us away. You have made sure we remained undiscovered by our many enemies. You allowed Haell and even the rest of us to grow in safety. For that, I thank you. New Grandera thanks you. Now rest.”
There was a mont of silence after that. None of us had anyone to pray to, I reckoned, but we wished our friend well into the afterlife regardless. That at least, I was confident existed in so form.
Perhaps our secret would be reincarnated into a life where it wouldn’t have a need to remain secret any longer. Where it could stand proud and tall for thousands of years, granting its warmth and protection to a family that would love it just as much.
I gave one last longing stare at our ho as we left the place for the final ti. My chest tightened once again at all the mories that we had made here, but I stood strong. The paint that covered every surface made smile.
And then I set it all on fire.
The paint proved flammable against my fireballs. Luine and Moonwash helped and did the sa thing, as even the rooms at the back were not spared from our final goodbye. It all burned away, closing this chapter of our lives with a final bang.
A single tear still made its way past my cheek as I left it all behind.
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