We couldn’t take care of the little priest forever, and he had lost all of his levels, so the first thing we accorded was taking him to a low level area so he would swallow some XPs and harden the fuck up. He looked at the bunny in front of him like a deer looks at the alien mothership about to run him over after having survived the soviet space program.

I put on my most supporting façade and forced my voice to match “Dude, no pressure, but you are, like, a pit bull. You have it in you to maul shit.”

“Arferfarf,” the ex-priest retorted.

“Listen here you average Pokémon fan”, and I meant that in the slurmost way possible, “Just because you find the bunny, in your words, ‘appealing’, doesn’t mean you can’t fuck it up.”

“Arf!”

“That’s the attitude. Now, make that bunny wish it was never born.”

The priest walked up to the bunny with doubtful steps, and the red eyes of the glires met him, probably digging into his empanada-tenderized soul.

He approached like a stalking cat: careful and betrayed by the big green bar above his head. The bunny held the stare, and the priest’s movement came to a halt. Slowly, he began walking in reverse, as a VHS-cursed cat stalking while the tape is being rolled back.

“Dear Diego in heaven, priest.”

Mariana came to my side and began rubbing my leg with her head. “Food?”

“I need comfort and you ask for food?”

“It’s never a bad moment to ask for food.”

I slapped my bitch away and pinched the bridge of my nose. Then I sent a leash made out of my belt to coil around the bunny and bring it to my hand. I grasped the animal by the head, careful to not cover its eyes as it kicked to get free. “I wonder how far I have come since I set a foot here. Here I discovered we could roll through attacks, I fought my first boss. I was pretty enchanted with the game-like world still. Not so much with Mariana’s newfound verbal skills, but—”

“Hey!” Mariana interjected.

“Is that a complaint about the things I am saying, or about not being fed?”

“Yes,” she Marianaed. Thanks, Mariana.

The bunny was trying to eat through the palm of my hand. Cute.

“Dog dismissed, I should continue with my monologue. Where was I… ah, yes.This prairie of green grasses and white bunnies marks my beginnings in this world, almost as much as a smoking crater marks Mariana’s.”

“What do I have to do with a smoking crater?”

If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

“Have you forgotten your first genocide?” I asked, looking at her in the eyes.

What I beheld, I believe, was the biological equivalent of a television’s static.

“…carry on. The fact of the matter is: I have progressed sicne then, improved as a necromancer and gained understanding of this world and what underlies it. And I hate it a thousand times more than back then. I, Walter Ignacio Gallardo, Antagonist of this world and everything it entail…” Finally, the instinct had won over the priest and he had latched onto the dangling bunny. “Good. Now maul it.”

The ex-priest wiggled his legs, visibly confused about what to do. He snarled a bit, still holding onto the kicking bunny’s butt.

I managed to verbally express a set of ellipses, a feat that, to this day, I haven’t been able to replicate. Whatever the LD50 of extraneous stupidity is, I was being exposed to thrice that amount.

I shook the bunny and, consequently, the dog attached. They waved like a seizing snake of fluff. “This… isn’t working. How old were you when you died?”

“Arf!” he barked between teeth, not letting the rabbit go.

“Seven hundred months?”

“Erf!”

“…You are the dog equivalent of a thousand-years-old vampire loli. Awesome.” I let them fall just to give an ironic applause. The priest lost about one fourth of his total health due to the bunny landing upon him and nigh-spraining his neck.

“If they die, I am eating them,” Mariana contributed.

“No, the priest is our friend, you… you are… I will put his body on a tall place so you can’t reach it.”

“Nouuuu.” Mariana howlcried.

And you may think “Hey, Mariana is a super intelligent, super strong, and super agile dog now. How come she cannot reach above the fridge?” and the answer is simple: I trusted that she wasn’t aware of all of that while enthralled by the prospect of food.

“I shall go on with my monologue; I cannot leave it unconcluded. What sort of villain would I be if I didn’t monologue to the empty air? And some may call this a schizo rambling, but that heroin-junky gnome right there, by that poppy, is… dying due to an overdose.” I said, pointing at an empty parcel just because I wanted to mess with Phaela. “But he can testify that I am not schizophrenic! Anyway, as I was saying…”

Mariana pronged me on the thigh with her nose. “You are taking my job as the most stupid animal here. Stop that.”

I patted her head. “Yeah, no. What are you going to do? Deport me?”

“Yes, to the dimension of vaporized owners,” she said with an ominously innocent tone.

“Fine. The thing being, I…” and then I decided that, if I was messing with Phaela, I could as well go all the way. I had to be careful, to not show malice on my face as I spoke, but to pretend adequate realization. She could see every centimeter of my body with that eye of hers, so I need to be in absolute control of my expression and bodily language. “… don’t hate this place as much as I would like to. It’s neat in some things, despite the lack of Amazon and Ms Word.”

Mariana jumped,over my head, perched on it with an agility unnatural for a golden retriever, and then, licked my forehead before coming back down with a little hop. “It’s not fever. What’s the deal? Are you becoming insane?” she telepathed.

“Don’t worry Mar, it’s nothing out of the usual.”

“What do you mean nothing out of the usual, it’s not like you to acquiesce… to … characterdevelopize.”

I snapped my fingers and pointed a chastising finger at her. “Stop it with the neologisms.”

“Sorry.”

Silence settled, and was only broken when, finally, the ex-priest managed to tear the trachea out of an innocent rabbit. A whisper of gold, probably a new level up animation, fluttered about him for a few seconds before vanishing. I cheered on him, and I’d like to think so did Mariana, with a private telepathy channel.

And thinking about Mariana’s telepathy channels, I had an idea so vile, so inenarrable that I couldn’t help but smile softly. “Hey, Mar, how many people can you reach with your telepathy?”

“Everyone on Planet. What for?”

“Ah, just… to send an apology for the problems caused.”

Mariana began wagging her tail. “Yay, we are going to do something horrible and delicious!”