Morning came, and with the rustling of leaves, Aria awoke. She was still in her igloo which, made of packed snow and ice, was tougher than steel. She awoke to the sound of scurrying and grumbling.

That’s when she noticed their little green feet. Scrambling about was a pack of goblins. They were attracted by the smell of food and they dug into the leftover corpses she laid, scattered about like a bear marking its territory through blood and violence.

Those goblins didn’t know what was coming at them, and with the snap of her fingers, she crawled out of her den and struck one with a simple spell.

Lightning. It shot out of her fingertips and into the monster. The goblin, geared in leather and iron armor, was fried black.

Aria knew about goblins but treated them like nothing more than monsters. Now, seeing a pack of them armed with swords and axes, she knew they were trouble.

For the first time, she’d have to properly battle without her companions’ aid.

The goblins resembled little children with green skin, makeshift fur clothing made from wild animals and weaponry stolen from whoever they came across. The gang let out howls and screams as they raised their blades and charged at Aria.

Like a samurai unsheathing and slicing with their sword in one motion, she took her hand, touched her opposite shoulder, ran over her collarbone and unleashed the mana within her. She could feel the surge of mana, which was still like the water of a puddle, stir and burst from her fingertips. It was like she was painting a line from one shoulder to another.

That mana surged, flashed and escaped as if a drop of water fell into a burning pot of oil. Aria’s magic was unrefined and uncouth. Most magic, after investing the skill points needed to unlock said branch, had to be trained and refined through diligent studying of tomes and repetitive practice.

A professional mage could shoot lightning bolts straighter than arrows, launch beams of high pressure water like a hose and lob fireballs like bullets. Aria, however, took on an animalistic approach.

Her mana came out like a shotgun welded together with pipes. While Isabelle specialized in fire and Troy in water, being a slime and all, Aria focused on thunder. Electricity was the most humane way to kill. With one jolt, she could stop the heart of her foes, killing them nearly instantaneously.

Their metal weaponry were like lightning rods, attracting even missed shots to come bend towards them. It was her plan to use metal weapons against their users. Being a martial artist, no matter how fast Wrath was, he would always find that her lightning would catch its target.

A single jolt of lightning pierced three goblins, sending them tumbling after spasming their muscles. The others saw that and realized the danger they were in. Some ran, while others gnashed their teeth and charged in, snow stained and muddied.

EXP filled her hands, flowing up her arms and towards her internal organs. Another level popped up in the corner of her vision, all while a trio of goblins came barreling towards her, axe first.

She watched, opened her palms, shut her eyes and slammed. An inch away from her skull, the axe froze mid-air.

Slapping her hands together, a thunderclap escaped, rising up the trees and leaving harsh burns that looked like electric scars. Those scars split and the tree, under its own weight, began to unfurl like a blossoming flower.

It split in half, with a pair of identical brushes of branches resting side by side. It was like the synapses of a brain — left and right mirrors of one another.

The three goblins stood still, empty eyed, then crumbled away to ash. The wood of their handles split and the metal of their blades cracked. Her thunderclap, a move she never dreamt of before, ruined the world before her.

Now, she was level thirteen. She had progressed far faster than she predicted. There was something multiplying her EXP — no doubt about it. The question was, just what was pushing her forwards?

There was no answer at hand. All she could do was look down at her palms. They surged with electricity. Just moments ago, she had them covered in snow with a snowball in her hand.

At that time, she was eavesdropping on the two, and from what she heard, it seemed like Isabelle was bluffing — pretending to be a cruel demoness who hunted humans without a second thought. She did mention that she wouldn’t kill children, which was a boon to her.

The conversation the two were having took quite the dark turn. To talk about how delicate life was and to turn to the question of morality when it came to killing monsters versus humans, who were technically monsters — the conversation was something she didn’t enjoy talking or even listening about.

That’s why she went ahead and balled up some snow and invited Isabelle to come play.

She knew the ramifications of the question and the morality behind it, but she didn’t want them to feel down. She had brought them here to come level up through the methods of pest extermination. If they were to question the morality of killing monsters, it’d make farming karmic koi a lot harder.

They say ignorance is bliss, and right now, she’d really appreciate it if she could just wipe it all away — forget everything and be a normal girl, one who’d spend her days enjoying life in a simple village, killing monsters and gaining EXP when the opportunity arose.

Instead, she had to be a pacifist, and it took its toll on her soul.

“Do monsters have souls?” she asked herself out loud. That’s when she heard footsteps come from behind her.

“I’m afraid monsters have no souls. That goes for all monsters.”

She turned. There he was. Like he was stalking her, watching her actions, he stood — welcoming her with a slow clap.

“See? I told you. You have the potential for greatness.”

Aria paused, stumbled back, then picked up a sword. It was so lopsided that it looked like an axe, but so long as it could chop and slice, it’d benefit from the branch of swordsmanship.

“Wrath,” she whispered.

Wrath smiled from beneath his straw hat.

“Indeed. It looks like you took my advice to heart. Shame, though, that it came too late. Your pacifism is commendable, but you know what they say — no good deed goes unpunished.”

He stood over the corpses of the goblins, and with a single finger, he reached out and touched one of them. Instantly, the goblin he touched jumped up, revealing it had faked its death. The little green monster stumbled back before grasping its throat. In seconds, it died, foaming at the mouth.

“What was that?”

“The touch of death,” he answered. “Level up enough and you’ll find a secret skill at the end of the assassin branch — though, it requires you to invest heavily into martial arts as well. It kills off weak or low leveled opponents in one touch, and can be passed on to another person.”

“Passed on?”

“The fish you killed — it was my doing. I gave you the touch of death and you passed it onto the karmic koi. It’s an assassination technique that can pass the blame onto others, quite the useful tool if you ask me.”

Aria froze. Wrath wiped off the grime on his hands before returning them to a neutral position. He was a master martial artist, meaning he probably knew the art of the drunken fist — a fighting style that’d let him lower his guard, faking weakness before an opponent.

By letting his arms hang by his side, he was inviting her to come strike. There, he’d counter, and with one blow, he’d shatter her.

Then, he began to walk forwards. She braced herself, using her lightning abilities to their maximum. She crossed her arms, resting both hands on opposite shoulders like a swordsman pulling their arm back for a wide swing.

That’s when Wrath approached and walked past her.

“Why are you here? Why did you reveal yourself to me?” Aria asked to his back.

He paused, then turned his head ever so slightly, revealing the side of his face.

“I happened to stumble across quite the massacre, and seeing that, I needed to know the source. I’m impressed that a little child like you could go on such a rampage. You deserve the title of wrath more than I do.”

He was trying to rile her up. Either that, or he was messing with her. Regardless, Wrath clearly didn’t fear her in the slightest. She wasn’t even a minor threat. Seeing him walk off, she couldn’t help but trail behind him. Wrath had revealed himself for a reason. She had to find out.

She stepped in his footsteps like an assassin hiding their footprints. She didn’t notice, but Wrath had pulled out a little mirror and watched as she copied his motions clumsily. He couldn’t hide his growing smile.

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“How many levels are you planning on farming?” Wrath asked. “Are you gunning for level 25? 30? Or maybe even 35? Whatever you do, it doesn’t matter. There’s no defeating me.”

“That’s impossible. There has to be a way to defeat you.”

Hearing that, Wrath stopped. Aria bumped into his back, stumbling away to avoid a death touch. He turned and peeked at her from beneath the rim of his hat.

“Tell me, where does life come from?”

“Life?”

“I’ll give you a hint. All life is built with mana. Everything is built with mana. The snow above is mana crystallized, the trees around us are mana turned to carbon and the nails on your fingers that endlessly grow are also made of mana. Everything you see can be summed up as a collection of mana, organized in its own unique way.”

“If everything is mana, then you are too. No matter what, there’s always a way to reorganize the way your mana is arranged. In other words, so long as you’re made of mana, you can die.”

She could see his smile turn to a smirk.

“Then tell me, Lady Aria. How are you going to kill me?”

Aria froze, then put his principles into practice. With a piece of chalk, she turned to a tree, traced a circle, then put everything into her mental concentration. Under the principles of alchemy, so long as it was made of mana, it could be manipulated.

The bark began to warp, twisting into a spiral before falling apart — blowing away as nothing more than ash.

“The touch of death can guarantee a foe’s death, but alchemy guarantees the transformation of mana from one form to another. I can turn the living into the dead.”

“How about you put that theory into practice?”

Wrath lowered his stance, extending a deadly fist forwards. Aria took a glove and etched the alchemic circle on her palm. The two had opposing weapons — the fist of an animal versus the alchemic circles of a scholar.

To Wrath, it was a simple duel between opposites. To Aria, it was an attempt at his life and towards the safety of her servants.

She began with two fingers on each shoulder, dragging them across her body like a hoe digging up earth before shooting lightning out of her fingertips. She created a positive and negative pole using her own body, shooting lightning out like an arc lantern.

Electricity flew at its target, but before it could fry Wrath, he threw a single weapon. A dagger flew above Aria’s face. It reminded her of the battle with Isabelle, how she tricked her explosive wisps into attacking not her, but a fallen chandelier.

The lightning chased after the dagger which stuck itself into a tree, a tree that burst open — cooked from the inside out.

“It’s very impressive how quickly you’ve mastered electricity. Unfortunately, lightning doesn’t strike twice.”

Like a magic trick, he revealed his hand. It was empty, but when he closed and opened it again, three daggers appeared between each finger. Like thunder before lightning, three daggers flew by her face — each one of them grazing her skin, spilling blood.

“What, are you just going to stand there?” Wrath asked, and he reached to his hip, spinning out a five cylinder revolver. With a single shot that grazed her ear, she realized what was going on.

This wasn’t him sparring. Her life was on the line. Wrath playfully spun his gun with each shot, hitting her with electric bullets. He shot her in the shoulder when she turned to run, in the leg when she neared a tree she tried to use as cover and in the hand when she tried to summon a thunderclap.

Wrath was ruthless. Each shot was meticulously placed. She found herself fully paralyzed, dragged down to her knees by the electricity that ran through her body. Her lack of muscles was the only thing keeping her from completely spasming.

He slowly walked up to the girl before grabbing her by the back of her head, lifting her up to meet him face to face.

That’s when she saw her face from beneath his hat. He had the pale skin of a corpse and his eyes were marked with a pair of red irises. He was human, clearly, but there was something very off about him.

“You resemble her,” he said before using two fingers to pry her eyelid open. He got a closer look before remarking, “You have it within your being.”

“Have what?”

Before he could answer, a fireball flew by Wrath’s face. He turned and smiled, lowering his hat once more.

“Aria!” she heard. It was Troy and Isabelle. Isabelle slung fireballs while Troy charged forwards, shield first, and rammed into Wrath’s shoulder like a rhinoceros.

“Troy?” she whispered, and she could see his beady black eyes from behind his helmet’s visor.

Wrath saw it too. He was unfazed by his shield bash. He simply peered into his helmet before smirking.

“Hoh? A talking slime?”

“I’m not ordinary slime. I’m Troy — the Stone Wall.”

He pulled back his arm and then parried. That parry wasn’t for Wrath’s attacks. No, it was for Isabelle’s explosive wisp she launched like a fireball. The wisp, with a damage multiplier, took a dent into Wrath’s health and physical constitution — creating an explosion and smoke cloud twice that of a regular wisp.

Troy pushed forwards and snatched Aria out of Wrath’s grasp. He carried her in one arm and his shield in the other.

“Lady Aria, are you alright?” Troy asked.

“Troy, what are you doing here? You weren’t supposed to be able to find me.”

“I know I couldn’t, so I relied on an old friend.”

Troy turned, directing her attention to Mary who stood behind her two servants. Mary stood, spear in hand, and when Aria saw her, Mary responded with a smirk of her own.

“Troy! It’s a trap!”

A javelin flew by Troy’s head, shattering the lower portion of helmet, revealing his expression of pure shock and betrayal.

“Mary? Just who are you?” Troy whispered. Mary had sped forwards as if she were skating on ice, and with her spear pointed to impale, she smiled.

“You can call me Sloth.”

Rainbow slime burst out of Troy’s chest. He had been thoroughly impaled on her spear. Sloth, with her weapon inside him, leaned in close and smiled.

“Your first mistake was trusting me,” Sloth said, utterly smugly. “You should have seen it coming when you so conveniently ran into me, right after Aria disappeared. If you were smarter, you’d put two and two together.”

“If that’s my first, then what’s my second mistake?” he asked.

That wasn’t supposed to happen, she thought. That’s when she got a closer look at Troy’s face and realized he wasn’t what she expected. She felt something cold touch her fingers. It wasn’t hot blood. No — it was rainbow slime.

“You — you aren’t human!?”

Slime shot out of the wound in his chest like a torrent of gushing blood, rendering Sloth immobilized in a coating of slime — slime that triggered her slothfulness.

“Non newtonian fluids… my weakness…” she let out, falling backwards into an inescapable fate brought on by laziness. Isabelle froze the slime, trapping Sloth in an icicle.

Aria wasn’t sure what a ‘newton’ was, but she ignored that — focusing on the other threat that stood before them. Through the smoke came Wrath, his straw hat gently burning with the wind, revealing half of his face. He had a calm look in his red eye and a gentle smile on his face — a smile that unnerved Aria.

“Troy, the Stone Wall, hmm?” he asked. “I underestimated you. Most people never learn how to abuse the world’s physics and the rules of the Gods. Multiplying the damage of projectiles with a shield parry, it’s something Sloth didn’t tell me you figured out.”

“I am the Stone Wall, the unbreakable shield,” Troy replied, lowering his helmet’s visor, covering up his slime core. “I am Lady Aria’s servant, and I will not allow the likes of you to demon her away.”

“How noble of you. Say, you seem to be the romantic type, are you not? Are you dreaming of a life as a royal knight, protecting princesses?”

Troy was carrying Aria like a princess. Seeing that, Troy couldn’t help but chuckle to himself.

“I guess I dreamt of that sort of life, but I swore fealty to Lady Aria. My arms will carry no princesses. They exist to serve my master.”

Wrath, hearing that, finally cracked. His smile broke and in its place was a laugh. It was unrelenting — as if Wrath was letting a swirling concoction of emotions spill out in mad laughter. Troy responded in kind, laughing on his own. It was strange, and if you watched from a distance, you’d think the two were old friends.

But suddenly, the laughter died down.

Wrath was no longer smiling.

“Ah, such a shame,” Wrath said. “If you weren’t the servant of Aria, I’d be happy to take you on as a rival, or even a friend.”

“A friend?”

“When you are eventually reincarnated, when your scattered mana becomes the building blocks of a new human, I pray we may laugh like this once more.”

It was instantaneous. Wrath sped forward like a bullet, and when Troy raised his shield to block his deadly fists, Troy noticed something. There were after images. Four different Wraths appeared, all of them charging forwards. Troy spun around, blocking each one of them in succession, only to find that no impact had struck his shield.

“Such a shame,” he heard, and he turned to see Wrath walk forwards, slowly, and extend a fist.

He opened his fist to poke out a single finger, and when that finger touched Troy’s chest, he felt it. A jolt of electricity ran through the body of slime, striking the core with one gentle blow.

Like a thousand year old titan, the armored swordsman froze, stared up towards the moon, and crumbled — vanishing into dust.

“Troy?” Aria asked, and she found her paralyzed body caught in a pile of ash — ash that blew away.

Troy was dead. His body was turned back to its most simplistic form — mana. That mana, in the form of dust, danced in the wind, to be revived into another creature.

Wrath pulled out a set of prayer beads and rubbed them together. He prayed for the man he just murdered with one touch.

“Murderer!” he heard, and a swarm of explosive wisps flew in from all directions. When their smoke dissipated, Aria found herself in the arms of Isabelle.

Tears streamed down her cheeks. Aria knew that Isabelle had quickly grown fond of Troy, and to see him killed in one blow caused something inside of her to snap apart. Isabelle would carry on Troy’s wishes, pulling Aria away from the danger of combat and towards someplace safe.

Isabelle dragged Aria by the hand. She used explosive wisps to kick up a storm of smoke for their escape.

“Don’t look back!” Isabelle said. “Keep moving forwards! Whoever these people are — you must not let them catch up to you!”

“Isabelle,” Aria murmured. She let go of her hand on purpose, falling behind.

“Aria! What are you doing!?” she asked, only to find Wrath and even Sloth emerging from the smoke.

“I’m sorry,” Aria said. “I signed a contract. I don’t have a choice but to stay.”

“But Aria —”

“Return to the dungeon,” Aria ordered. “Tell Gray that I am no longer under his service. And about Troy…”

Aria reached into a pocket to unveil a tiny sphere. It was a silvery white gem, one she tossed over to Isabelle.

“Take it to Gray. He’ll know what to do.”

“Aria…”

“And forget about me,” Aria asked. “I leave the position of second in command to you. One day, in the future, we’ll meet again — and when we do, I want to see our dungeon thrive.”

Isabelle took that sphere and kept it close to her heart. With tears in her eyes, she bowed — giving her last goodbyes to Aria before turning to go. She had accepted her as a demon, brought her into a home where she was welcome and wanted.

She had a debt to pay to Aria, and to pay it off, she had no choice but to do as asked.

“One day, in the future, we will meet again,” Isabelle answered, “and when we do, we will become servants strong enough to protect you.”

Aria smiled, and with that, Wrath and Sloth disappeared into the winter world.