Willhelm Eelwater limped his way through the tall grass.

He'd just escaped his pursuers by the skin of his teeth.

Everyone he knew and loved was dead.

His whole family had been exterminated in the chaos that had engulfed the Calassarian kingdom after the destruction of the capitol. Its enemies had long been waiting for an opportunity to strike. Many of the aristocratic families in the royal faction were targeted.

The Eelwater family in particular had many enemies. Formerly a merchant family, they had been granted nobility recently by the king. It didn't help their case that they were elves. The Calassarian kingdom has had a long standing feud with the elven tribes. The plains goblin king, himself from a species originally unwelcome in the kingdom, had picked up the habit of granting nobility willy nilly. A dangerous policy like that could bring all sorts of dangerous characters to power.

Dangerous characters like Gary.

Willhelm swore to avenge his family one day, and make the villains responsible for the sack of Calassaria pay with their blood. He would pay any price to accomplish this righteous act.

For now, Willhelm needed to tend to his wounds.

Gary, in an improvised ghillie suit, continued to pretend to be grass. He'd taken up the habit soon after his escape from the city. The suit was so poorly made that he was only hidden by virtue of the fact that Wilhelm was too injured to notice him. Everyone else that had passed close to Gary had just assumed he was a misformed plains goblin, or a druid attempting to commune with the greenery.

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The beige dot sensed desperation.

"This is my chance!" thought the dot.

"Hey you!" Wilhelm heard inside his mind.

"Who's there!" screamed Wilhelm, before spotting the poorly hidden Gary. He attempted to take a battle stance. "I don't know who you are, but I don't have anything for you to take." He growled.

"Relax, I'm not trying to take anything from you." pleaded the dot. "Also, please ignore the soon to be corpse. I'm only inhabiting this body temporarily."

Wilhelm relaxed his stance, but kept his guard up. "What do you want?"

"Nothing at all, except a ride off of this thing. I'll give you anything you want! Secret techniques, hidden treasure, a palace, my wife if I ever find her again." purred the dot.

Wilhelm was entranced by the dot's voice. "Your wife?" Wilhelm groggily uttered.

"Yes! Hells you can have my whole family!" it yelled.

"What do I have to do?" asked Willhelm.

"Touch this thing, but do it quickly! It's surprisingly agile." ordered the dot.

Willhelm sprung into action. Rushing on his one leg to touch Gary

Gary, assuming he was being attacked, launched himself into the air.

The dot sprung into action. It used some of its vital energies to bring him back down to earth.

"Now!" Screamed the dot.

The reaction was instant. The dot, tiny as it was, moved at speeds never before seen by dotkind. The vile, deadly. Unrelenting, unforgiving soil that was Gary's skin gave way to the relative paradise of Willhelm's skin. The dot felt like it had just escaped from the overwhelming pressure and heat of the center of the earth; Into the peace and calm of a tropical paradise, martini in hand. It firmly placed itself on the back of Willhelm's neck.

"Run! Now!" yelled the dot.

Wilhelm took the advice of his new benefactor and took off running.

Gary, confused about what had just happened, suddenly felt wrong. Like he didn't belong here. That he was unwanted. That he reasonably shouldn't have come into existence in the first place. The universe agreed.

Gary began to inflate like a balloon. The mana in the area started drawing towards him. The sky darkened, the earth quaked, black lighting struck all around.

"What the hell is going on?!" Thought Gary.

Gary reached critical mass and then he..

Imploded. Gary turned into a small black marble. Hmm that's odd Gary was supposed to explode. At least according to the Sunset Emperor. I suppose it's an easy mistake to make considering the fact that the process is identical.

Oh Gary let this be a lesson to you. Don't go around picking up and using strange cultivation methods you find in secret underground labs. Despite being a marble, Gary still lived! At the moment, Gary was…

Gary…

Hmm… Where's Gary?