I appear in the lobby. WHITE. Gotcha. Time to get back to—

<[Thank you for your cooperation.]>

Do you want to enter?>

…Not even going to give me time to do my toddler-style impromptu painting? Right. Not that I really care, of course.

With nothing better to do, I press the ‘yes’ button, unsurprised to find myself instantly whisked away to a dark, ominously lit cave. Always with the caves. Whoever designed the tutorial must be a real cave enthusiast.

Now, what are we dealing with he—

He meets my eyes. I meet his eyes. I fight the urge to wave at him. He doesn’t wave at me, so I guess it’s fine.

Hell Difficulty Twenty-eighth Floor:

The Imprisoning Circle.>

<[Clear Condition]

Defeat the captured Herald

of the God of Kings.>

…I had a feeling that that’s what I’m looking at, but this clarifies things, yeah.

In the middle of the room, sitting within a fairly large circle of what appears to be sand, or maybe salt, is a guy. Just a guy. A goblin, sure, but a guy nonetheless. He’s wearing clothes, sitting on the floor, cross-legged, and appears to be quite the burly sort. The only thing that gives away the fact that he’s a herald at all are his eyes, which are a vibrant, artificial purple.

Oh, and the status message above his head, of course.

…Right. His status is completely glitched out. It looks like someone tried to mash together ‘Harad son of something’ with the ‘herald of the god of kings’ thing, resulting in this abomination. It’s so bad I’m almost impressed.

Harad looks me up and down. “...Are you the best they could get?”

I approach him. Once I’m close enough to look down at him properly, I cross my arms. “Are you the pest I was sent here to exterminate?”

“I am,” he says, not biting. “Though, by the look of you, I’m starting to doubt those lightning-choked gods have all their drakes tethered.”

“I agree with the latter part,” I mention. Something feels off. A lot of things feel off, but one feels off more than others. “You’re a lot less haughty than the last herald I killed.”

He waves it off. Scarred fingers and hands. Warrior or blacksmith of some sort? “I haven’t fully turned yet.” I sit down in front of him, my silence encouraging him to talk more. In response, he sighs dramatically. “Look, ratboy, what do you want from me? Yesterday, I woke up with purple eyes. Big deal. I go to the priest, he tells me to go to the cathedral in the city. I grab my drake, kiss the wife goodbye, tell my kids not to pester her too much or touch my tools, and off I go. I ride all night, reach the place, walk inside the cathedral, and you know what happens?”

“No idea,” I comment.

“A damn god shows up! There I was, hanging out, poking at the gazillion books, and all of a sudden there’s a boy tuggin’ at my apron, going ‘sir, sir!’ So I ask the kid, I say, ‘What do you want? I’m busy, so buzz off.’ And the kid—inquisitive little pest—asks me if I had any weird dreams lately. Who asks that? I didn’t even know him! I tell him that, and then he gets all pissed off, telling me that that was no way to speak to the god of knowledge. I tell him that he’s got no right to talk to me like that, either.” Waving his hands in the air, Harad makes no secret of his displeasure. He’s got an oddly engaging way of talking. “Well, you should’ve seen his face. Damn kid looked ready to burst! I would’ve laughed in his face if he hadn’t dragged me into some kind of alternative dimension or whatnot. Terrifying. That’s no way to treat someone.”

The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

“No respect whatsoever,” I agree.

“Preach, preach,” Harad says, nodding deeply. “I was right about to ask him to put me back when he pulled a book straight outta my skull. My skull!” To empathize his point, he points a big finger at his forehead. “And while I’m still trying to figure out what’s happening, he starts flipping through it, gets to the latest part, looks me in the eye and goes, ‘I’m afraid you’ve got terminal purple eye ‘cause you drunkenly agreed to join the bad god we don’t like.’” Harad barks a laugh.

I chuckle with him, but I feel the need to mention, “He did not say that.”

“No, no, he didn’t,” Harad admits. “But he might as well have! Stupid kid. A bunch of other divine wingers showed up and told me what a sad thing it was and how I’d need to be done away with. According to them, if I stayed with my family, I’d suddenly transform into some sort of pseudo-dragon, except even worse. Obviously, we couldn’t have that. So they sent me here, told me not to freak out, and that someone would show up to do away with me.”

I make a face at him. “Is that seriously all they told you?”

“Yup. Sit in a circle, wait for a while, and die.”

“Damn. That sucks.”

“Live at their whims, die at their whims.” He shrugs. His apathetic eyes turn to me. “Well? What’re you waiting for? I’m not going to kill myself.”

He’s got a point. Standing up, I brush off my knees before heading inside the circle, my claws raised and ready. As soon as I step into range, something firm and sharp shoots out, stabbing me through my chest. I look down to find a semi-translucent spear of purple entering right below my heart and exiting through my back. I cough up a bit of blood. As I stare at it, another spear shoots out, penetrating my stomach cleanly.

I step out of the circle. Then, I turn to Harad, wiping the blood from my lips. “What the heck, man?”

“I swear to you, ratboy, I have no idea what that was.” This he says while his hand is still extended, said purple spears clearly visible as they slip back inside his open palm.

“You literally have—”

But when I point at them, they’re gone. Harad looks down at his hand. It’s normal. He looks up at me, perking his brow. Ah. I see how it is.

“I’m going to try again,” I say slowly enough so that even the gods watching can understand, “and you’re going to maybe not stab me to death with your freaky hand spears.”

“Got it,” Harad says.

But he obviously didn’t get it, because the second I stepped inside the circle, his spears attacked me again. I step out to recover. Then, I step in again. His spears attack me. After the seventh time, I decide to just power through, ignoring the spears as they stab my chest and stomach and legs and arms and neck and chin and skull. One I’m close enough to him, I shear my claws through his neck and watch in straight-faced agony as his flesh easily knits itself back together again. “Dude.”

“I can’t help it!”

Groaning, I retreat. This is going to be a long one.

So, to summarize, my strategy would be to enter the circle, take his attacks, and then either step back out if they were a bit too grievous, or advance and try to kill him if they weren’t. Killing him didn’t really work. He didn’t bleed, he didn’t need any of his organs—even his heart—his head, when decapitated, would keep talking, and even when I set him on fire, he was fine after a while.

I started considering the possibility of trying to redo the thing I did with the kid. That is, the favor I did for the goddess of children. Hug him. Tightly.

And it might even have worked if it hadn’t been for the fact that he was like a porcupine in terms of approachability. Hugging him would most likely have resulted in my body having more holes than a block of Swiss cheese. So, I left the prospect of doing that behind. Instead, I returned to how I defeated the first one.

“Eat me?”

“Eat you.”

“Piece by piece?”

“Like finger food,” I say. “Or a charcuterie board.” He stares at me. I stare at him. “It’s cool with you, right?”

His nose wrinkles up. “What’s the point in asking me? Kill me in whatever way works.”

“Alright,” I reply, shrugging.

The next time I attacked, I took a big bite out of his hand before retreating. Mmm. Grape jelly…

“Wow,” Harad says, looking at his distinct lack of thumb. “It really isn’t healing.”

“Yep,” I say, wiping my lips. “‘Cause I ate it.”

With his blessing, I keep it up. Eating him entirely took around eight days in total, though I also spent four days before this realization. It could probably have taken less time if I hadn’t let him sleep during the nights, but I didn’t feel like attacking a snoring fella. Same deal as attacking hibernating bears, I guess.

During the time I spent not attacking him, ergo when I was recovering from his attacks, we’d talk. Nothing too philosophical, just simple stuff. Apparently, he was a tanner! Well, combined tanner, cobbler, leatherworker and hobby smith. I showed him my stuff, he gave me some feedback, and I understood that to implement it, I’d need to get hold of an actual tanning rack, alongside other tools. Harad was kind of chill in that he agreed to let me have his stuff, assuming I also told his family his last wishes. His wishes were kind of dumb though, so I only put to mind that he didn’t want a funeral, and that he’d like his second son to inherit the business since his oldest was a rotten egg and a frolicker. I asked him if he wanted his skin turned into anything, but he reminded me that I’d need to eat that as well, so I relented.

I saved his head for last so we could keep talking for a day or two. Towards the end, his spears didn’t even really attack me, but I still retreated to rest because… I needed it, I suppose.

I might have left him to live for a while longer if he hadn’t started getting really goopy. The text above his head was also shifting to becoming more ‘the herald’ and less ‘Harad’, so that was also part of it.

In the end, I said goodbye, and spent a few minutes eating his purple-ish brain from his skull like the flesh of a watermelon. Of course, I still ate the bone and everything, so in the end, there was nothing of him left. He was gone.

In a sense, though, I guess he’ll always be with me.

<[Thank you.]>

the following items:

[Tanning Tools]>

…No way. A nice floor clear reward for once? I can’t believe my—