The screams came from the forest, somewhere ahead of where my team had ventured into it. I took the slime off my shoulder and tucked it safely into one of the many handy pockets hidden inside my coat and dashed into the trees, following the trail of broken branches and crushed scrub. The sounds of a battle clashed not far ahead.

I emerged into a large clearing where trees had been cut down and turned into a cluster of three crude wooden structures. I couldn’t in all good conscience call them houses, even calling them huts was a generous stretch, but it was clear that people had been living in them. Well, not people, exactly. Orcs.

Orc Big, strong, and dumb, these porcine monsters have been the bane of civilized races since time immemorial. Powers:

Me Gonna Getcha - Adept: Intimidate enemies

Skills:

Axe - Adept

I would have known even without evaluating them what they were. Ever since Tolkien lifted them from vague mythology into supercharged goblin territory, the humble orc has been a mainstay monster in fantasy worlds, and whoever designed the creatures here had cherry picked details from different sources. There were eight of them, all muscular with hog-like noses, two citrine yellow teeth jutting up over their top lips like tusks, pink skin mottled with odious patches of green and speckled with thick, pin-like whiskers, and a nasty disposition. They were all holding primitive axes made from sharpened stones lashed to thick tree branches in gnarled extremities that were somewhere between meaty hands and chunky hooves. What the weapons lacked in sophistication they made up for with sheer size. Only six of the orcs were still standing.

The team had used my strategy to good effect. Right in front of me, Bruce, Byron, and Nina held back. Nina knelt on the ground cradling Sam’s head in her lap. Blood flowed freely from a long gash down his side, which she was healing. A two-dimensional oval about the size of a door floated in the air beside them, one of Byron’s portals. Through it, the other side of the other end of the portal was visible under a sheen of translucent swirling colors.

About thirty feet ahead, the rest of the team were engaged with the orcs. Wayne was at the forefront, his sword blazing. Two humanoid skeletons clad in rusty broken armor and wielding a chipped sword flanked him on either side. Wayne traded blows with an orc that was a head taller than the others, a necklace of bones glowing with a pearlescent blue aura hanging around its thick, bristly neck, probably their leader. He was only barely holding his own against the monster. The skeletons were each fighting a regular orc and seemed to be floundering against the orcs’ single-minded assault, but they were at least serving their purpose by preventing their foes from assisting the bigger orc, keeping them away from Wayne like meat, er, I mean bone shields.

Sigrid and Jane held the right flank, each with sword in hand and struggling against their own orcs, while Andy stood on the left side taking on the final orc that still stood fighting. Two orcs lay on the ground near him, dark blood oozing from numerous gashes and bite marks. Two dead panthers lay tangled with them, the obvious source of the orcs’s wounds. Another oval portal floated next to the bodies, the twin to the one in the bubble in front of me.

Without thinking I charged toward the portal in front of me and leaped into it, popping out through the other side beside Andy. The orc’s enormous weapon was a problem for Andy, its wide, flailing swings preventing him from getting close enough to use his kung fu effectively. I channeled my affinity with Ice to encase the orc’s hands, axe handle and all, in a big block of heavy ice, which threw the monster off balance and stopped it swinging long enough for Andy to seize the opportunity and pummel it with a series of kicks and punches. It wouldn’t last long under such an onslaught.

System: Your affinity with Ice has evolved

Thank you, next.

Wayne’s summoned skeleton closest to me crumbled against its superior opponent’s attacks, clattering to the ground in a jumble of disconnected bones. Growing that flower on the thorny wall had given me some ideas about combining affinities, so I used a synthesized combination of Earth and Water to turn the ground under the orc who’d slain it into soft mud. Its feet sank up to mid-calf, then I turned the ground solid again. It was still alive and swinging, and roaring with anger, but it couldn’t move. That was good enough for me.

System: Your affinity with Earth has evolved

System: Your affinity with Water has evolved

System: Your mastery of Synthesis has evolved

Thank you, next.

Wayne was holding his own against the big guy, but his other skeleton was struggling. I could’ve helped it out, but Sigrid and Jane were also having a hard time. Only Sigrid’s shield was keeping them from feeling the bite of their orcs’ axes, so I decided to assist them instead.

“Andy,” I said, “finish this one off and help the skeleton.”

“Got it,” he said as he landed a fierce kick to the side of his orc’s head. There was a sickening snap, then the orc crumpled, its head falling unnaturally limp to the side.

I was starting to feel the effect of using Affinity Control so much so every part of me felt heavy and drained with fatigue, but I figured I still had one or two more uses in me. It probably wasn’t the best time to experiment, but I had a gut feeling that I should try using Void next so I went with it. I targeted the orc that seemed to be giving Jane and Sigrid the most trouble and a black sphere covered with swirling colors appeared around its head. It immediately dropped its axe and fell to its knees, clutching its throat.

Using my skill this way was surprisingly effective. I wasn’t sure what would happen. I thought maybe it would simply block the orc’s vision, but judging by the way the monster struggled it seemed to do a lot more. This came at a cost, though, because whereas the ways I had manipulated elements in this battle were one-off shots; maintaining the Void like this was an ongoing drain on my already depleted mana. My mana was too low to use my skill again, so I decided to keep it up as long as I could, hoping it would be enough to give Sigrid and Jane the time they needed to turn the tables.

As it turned out, that wasn’t very long. I strained to maintain the Void, but soon my head began to swim and my vision clouded, then all went black.

I passed out.

When I came to, things around me were quite different. I was still in the orc clearing, but the battle was long over. Eviscerated orc corpses had been shunted into a pile to one side, their mana crystals removed, all except for one that was semi-upright in the middle of the open space, body keened over with its legs still stuck in the ground. I was sitting on the dirt, my back against one of the huts. Sigrid sat cross-legged to one side of me, wiping orc gore from her armor; Nina and Jane sat on the other side chatting away, clearly still riding the high of their victory. The others crowded around a small chest. Bruce seemed to have convinced everyone that it was trapped, so they were arguing over the best way to get it open, desperate to see what treasure lurked inside.

“Oh hey,” Sigrid said, “welcome back.”

“Hey,” I said. “So I guess we won?”

“We sure did, thanks to you.”

“Me? All I did was pass out.”

Sigrid nudged my leg with her knee. “Hardly. We were in deep shit until you showed up throwing around affinity bombs.”

“There he is,” Nina said from my other side, shoving a slab of bread and a chunk of cheese into my hands. “Here, eat. Get your mana back up.”

I took the food, mumbling my gratitude as I chomped into it. I was starving. The others saw that I was awake and came over, all eager to regale me with what happened after I lost consciousness.

With his orc unable to lift its axe because of the ice, Andy had finished it off handily before helping Wayne’s skeleton finish off its orc. The three of them together managed to take down the leader.

“That was a great idea with the ice,” Andy said. “All I needed was an opening and you gave it to me.”

“I’m glad it worked,” I said.

Sigrid and Jane, able to focus together on one orc while the other floundered under the effect of the Void, put it down with the help of a rock thrown by Byron, a lucky shot that binged the goliath right between the eyes. Even after the Void sphere went poof when I went down, that orc was left gasping for breath and unable to fight, easy prey for the girls’ combined assault.

“You used Void, didn’t you?” Jane said. “What was up with that?”

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

“I can’t be sure,” I said, “but I think it was suffocating. I mean, Void is the opposite of air, right? So maybe when I put it around its head it got smothered with nothing to breathe.”

“Nothing can survive in a vaccuum,” she said.

I turned to Byron, who also had the Void affinity. “Something to remember if you’re in a pinch. Just be careful, it’ll suck the mana out of you pretty quick.”

“So we noticed,” Nina said.

The final orc had remained helpless with its feet trapped in solid earth, and the team admitted they’d had a hard time bringing themselves to kill it when it was so defenseless, so in the end they let the skeleton finish it off before Wayne dismissed it. Everyone agreed that it was a good lesson: there were more ways to defeat an enemy than by killing it, taking it out of the fight can be just as effective.

Sam had been badly hurt when he and his summoned panthers tried to take on two orcs, but Nina healed him up good as new. She fixed up everyone else’s wounds too, then tried her healing power on me. It only worked on actual injuries, though, not mana drain overload, so all they could do was wait for me to recover naturally. The chest had been discovered in the middle hut, ostensibly the one the leader had occupied.

“If you have any ideas about how to open it,” Andy said, “we’re all ears.”

“I wanted to blast it with a fireball,” Jane said, “but I got vetoed.”

“You’re gonna blast the whole chest apart if you do that,” Wayne said.

“No I won’t.”

“Did you try freezing the lock?” I said. They looked at each other sheepishly. “And you call yourselves gamers, “I said.

“I most certainly do not,” Jane said.

“Well who has Ice?” Wayne said.

Jane raised her hand. “But like I said I am not a gamer, how am I supposed to think of things like this?”

“I can make ice,” I said.

Sigrid patted me on the arm. “You’re excused from coming up with the idea earlier due to lack of consciousness.”

Andy slowly raised his hand too. “I have Ice affinity.”

“And what’s your excuse?” Wayne said.

“I don’t know how to use it yet,” Andy said.

“Looks like we need a solid training session to get everybody skilled up with Affinity Control,” I said. I nodded toward the chest. “Jane? Could you do the honors? I’m a little wiped.”

Jane clapped and sprang to her feet. “Yes!”

I remained sitting with Sigrid and Nina while everybody else went with Jane to the chest. We watched as she froze the lock, then looked around for something to smash it with.

“Anybody got a hammer?”

Byron opened his inventory. “Coming right up!” He whipped out his forge, and before you could say ‘we need someone who can pick locks’ he pulled a hammer out of it and passed it to Jane. “One hammer, hot off the press.”

Jane bowed her head as she accepted the tool, then lined it up with the lock.

“Wait!” I said.

Jane sighed. “What?”

“Let me do it.”

“Why?”

I quickly explained my Murder Hobo gift. “There’s a chance for better loot if I’m the one to open the chest.”

Jane handed me the hammer. “You do the honors then.”

I lined it up, then closed my eyes and smashed it down on the frozen lock.

The entire thing shattered. Pieces of wood and metal and ice went flying in all directions and a pool of coins spilled out where there was once a solid chest.

“Oops,” I said, and handed the hammer back to Jane.

“Well that worked, I guess,” she said, laughing.

Jane kissed the head of the hammer and offered it back to Byron, who stuffed it into his inventory along with the forge.

Seeing Jane so happy reminded me of something.

“Hey Jane?” I said. “Come here, I’ve got something for you.”

Her head snapped over and she looked at me with the sort of doe-eyed expression a puppy gives you when hearing the word W-A-L-K. “Presents?”

I reached into my coat and pulled out the slime. I held it out to her. Her nose wrinkled.

“What the hell is this?” she said.

“Your new pet, of course.”

Byron and Nina noticed and came over too. “Hey, is that a slime?” Byron said.

“So cute!” Nina said. “Where’d you find it?”

“It fell out of a tree,” I said. “I think it’s just a baby.”

“How can you tell?” Jane said.

“That’s what its Status says.”

Jane stood there, staring at the blob wobbling slightly in my outstretched hand with an expression that could only be described as dubious. “So this thing dropped out of a tree and you immediately thought of me?”

“Well, not immediately,” I said.

“If you don’t want it I’ll take it!” Nina said.

“What does it do?” Jane said.

“This one’s talented. It can eat anything, spew acid, and change its shape.”

“That explains why it made you think of Jane,” Sigrid said, earning her a glare from her friend.

“You’re kidding,” Jane said to me, then turned to Sigrid and added, “good one.”

“It’s a slime,” I said, as though that explained everything.

“Seriously, I’ll take it,” Nina said, hands outstretched toward the little beastie, fingers clenching greedily.

“What if it’s a bad slime?” Byron said.

“It’s not a bad slime,” Nina said.

“People keep these as pets?” Jane said, poking at it experimentally with a finger, then smiling a tiny bit when it jiggled.

“Not normally, no. They’re monsters. But this one’s special,” I said.

Jane reached out a tentative hand. The slime oozed onto it. She brought it closer to her face and stared at it. The area closest to her bulged a bit, stretching toward her as though staring back. “It is kinda cute.”

“You have to name it,” Byron said.

“What, now?” Jane said.

“Giving it a name makes it yours. It creates the bond. It’s just how it’s done.”

Jane’s eyes narrowed. “If you’re making this up. If this thing is actually going to piss acid all over me or something...I swear you will regret it forever.”

“We’re not making this up,” I said. “It’s, like, a gamer thing.”

“Okaaaay,” Jane said. “How about Squishy?”

The slime jiggled a bit on Jane’s hand.

“I think it likes it,” Nina said.

“Or else it’s peeing,” I said, “fifty-fifty.”

Jane ignored me and snuggled the slime against her cheek. “Then I shall call him Squishy and he shall be mine and he shall be my Squishy.”

“Hello Squishy,” Nina said. It jiggled again. “It definitely likes the name.”

Suddenly Jane’s eyes popped open.

“What is it? What’s wrong?” I said, my heart stopping.

Did it just piss acid on her?

She broke into a big grin and my heart started again.

She’s fine.

“Fun fact,” Jane said, still cradling the slime as she pointed into the air in front of her with her free hand. “I am the first Player to tame a monster.” She curtsied.

“Nice,” I said. “Did you get some Reward Tokens?”

She shook her head and her smile got bigger. “Nuh uh. This was a special secret quest, so instead of tokens my reward was a new Power.”

Sigrid beamed at her friend. “Nice! Show us!”

Powers:

Beast Friends Forever - Novice: Form spiritual bonds with applicable creatures

“You’re a tamer!” Nina squealed.

“What’s a tamer?” Jane said.

“You can tame monsters to be your allies,” Nina said.

“So that’s...good?” Jane said.

Nina looked like Jane had just thrown a dead possum over her fence. “Are you freaking kidding me?” Nina said.

“I want to be a tamer, too,” Sam said. “Do I need the Power?”

“Maybe not. Jane tamed it before she had the Power,” Byron said.

“Or did she get the Power so that she could tame it?” Bruce said.

“No, I think the Power comes as an acknowledgment of the latent ability that was awakened within her when she forged the bond with the slime,” Wayne said.

“The slime has a name,” Nina said.

“But she needed to have the Power first in order to make the bond with, ah, Squishy,” Bruce said.

“We don’t know that,” Byron said.

Jane turned her gaze away from the slime and the nerds arguing about it and toward me. The smile alone she gave me was worth it all. “Thanks, Daniel. But why me?”

“It seemed the right thing to do,” I said.

“If you say so,” she said, then got pulled away by Nina, who wanted a turn holding Squishy.

It was the truth, it was the right thing to do. But it was hard enough explaining about slimes and pets and pet slimes. Going into the whole protagonist thing would be just too much work right now, and not really the sort of conversation to have in front of everybody. If she’d watched any anime she’d already know why she had to have the pet, but in this situation her ignorance of being the protagonist was exactly why she was the protagonist. The main character’s journey is all about adapting to the new world, and nobody had to adapt there more than Jane. She was the ultimate fish out of water.

Sigrid leaned against me, resting her head on my shoulder. “Quite the team you’ve assembled, huh?”

I couldn’t help but smile. “I did good, huh?”

“You did good, yep.” After a pause, she added, “So why did you choose to give it to Jane?”

“You already have Meowmeow?”

“Good answer, but you’re lying. Dish.”

“Look at her with it. Tell me they don’t belong together.”

Jane was standing on the toes of one foot, ballet-style, with her head thrown back, balancing the slime on her nose, while Nina and Sam laughed.

Sigrid hurmed. “That’s...not really an answer.”

“Sure it is,” I said.