After evolving my Butcher to Executioner, his crimson Santa Claus outfit turned completely black and he grew a long braided beard the colour of tar. The Butcher’s Axe in his hands evolved into a massive jet-black scythe. For some reason, the spine of the long curving blade was studded with blinking frog eyes and the long handle ended in a webbed foot.

Name: Requiem for a Frog

Occupation: Executioner’s Scythe

Species: Scythe (Tool)

Level: 143/666

Alignment: Evil

Faction: Tsukumogami (Possessed Object)

Just like with when I evolved my Mayor into Guild Master, I had to evolve another minion to the now-vacant position, but I also had to craft another Butcher’s Axe to give the new Butcher. Fortunately, I didn’t think there was anything wrong with having two weapons in my settlement that inflicted insanity on their wielders. After all, what was the worst that could happen?

Kyle the Molerat Midget was yelling obscenities at all the minions gathered around the Executioner’s Slab, while the icon of death, Black Santa, stood ready, a grin on his big-lipped face and an unhinged expression in his huge eyes.

The Mayor, Guild Master, and all my new Aristocracy stood by themselves, while the unevolved and unassigned minions gathered around, gibbering loudly. Some of them spoke what might pass for words, thanks to completing the intro course to Whomen Language at my new school that the Toadcaller reluctantly visited once a day to teach my minions for half an hour.

“I still think this is going to backfire. What if he’s the heir to some super powerful Molerat Midget dynasty? Or maybe he’s an über-powerful drug kingpin!?”

“But he’s disgusting,” I replied, not sure why Imu cared so much.

Execute him!

Before Imu could argue his point further, the Executioner let his scythe fall on Kyle’s neck, sending his head bouncing off the ground for a few metres before it rolled to a standstill. With a bloody hand, the Executioner ran his fingers through his braided beard.

I wondered what we should do with the body, but then Goldie hopped over and swallowed the headless body in one gulp, a horrified Imu sitting atop her back and unable to stop her before she hopped towards the head next.

But then System came running, grabbed the Molerat Midget’s head and cupped it under her armpit and ran off.

Congratulations! For successfully executing a captive of your settlement, you have gained the [Death Sentence] perk!

[Death Sentence] – Enables you to tag any humanoid within your demesne and mark them for execution. All your enforcement-type minions will attempt to arrest them and as soon as they have been captured they will be publicly executed.

I wondered what the Executioner thought about all this, so I used my Mind-reader on him:

I am fuelled by death. With enough lives sacrificed to me and my blade, I can ascend and return to haunt the Imps who slew me in a past life!

“Should we warn the System Imps about this?” I asked Imu.

“To heaven with them,” he replied.

System had disappeared with the head and I never saw what happened to it in the end.

Now spectating team: ‘Team Chesticle’ engaging in quest: ‘Calamity Hydra-Goose’!

After a day and a half, they had finally found the first signs of their quarry. Lyzänder wasn’t big on monster-hunting quests but he had assumed the Goblin Trio would have at least had some sort of tracking skills in their bountiful arsenal. He had focused on firepower almost exclusively, with the only exception being performance-enhancers for when he had to really lay down pipe. Granted, he had perhaps gone a bit too overboard with that Enchantress in upper Woodfell and she had cursed him with a magical STI that made his gait awkward and had some unfortunate side-effects on his potency.

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“I expected you to be better than this, Nim-Nem-Nom,” he complained.

“Nim Illusionist, not Tracker!”

“Nem Fleetfoot, not Ranger!”

“Nom Scoundrel, not Tracking Ranger!”

Lyzänder sighed for what must’ve been the forty-seventh time. For some reason, the Goblins insisted on staying in the giant-sized trench-coat.

“I must say: these feathers are quite tough for belonging to a goose,” he remarked, lifting one of the steel-strong feathers into the air. If the hollow shaft was attached to a proper handle and the edges sharpened, it might make for quite a powerful dagger.

“Hydra-Goose,” Nim corrected him.

“What even is a Hydra-Goose?” Lyzänder asked out loud.

“Goose, many heads!” Nem answered.

“Hydra-Goose, very strong, ancient calamity!” Nom added.

“It can’t be that bad,” he replied. “It’s just Silver-Rank in difficulty, so it can’t be worse than a Spine-Bear or Murder-Slug.”

It was that bad. Actually, it was worse than just bad. Worse than even a Super-Murder-Slug, which he had fought only once, an encounter he still bore the sticky scars from.

“Come on, you useless goblins! I can’t keep the shield up much longer!” he yelled to his frozen-stiff companions, while using his throbbing magically-engorged wand to keep the barrier up, while one of the Goose3’s three heads continued spewing scalding flames at them.

When cracks began forming along the edges of his Arcane Panic-Bubble, the trench-coat fell to the ground and the three goblins jumped out into a fantastic power pose, before yelling:

“We the fearsome Goblin Triplets! Nim!”

“Nem!”

“Nom!”

Then Nim cast a doppelganger spell that copied all of them five times, such that an army of ugly green creatures crowded the area behind Lyzänder. In that same moment, the Panic-Bubble burst and he managed to dive aside, as the flame continued on through half the copies and turned Nem to ashes in a second.

With a roar of terrified outrage, the remaining two goblins and their doppelganger horde charged the enormous Honking Calamity, but no sooner had they begun their charge than the third head spewed out noxious gas that shrivelled them up into ancient time-ravaged corpses that in the blink-of-an-eye underwent the whole gamut of decay.

“For fuck’s sake,” he cursed, seeing his companions immediately defeated. Never trust a goblin’s word, the old saying in Woodfell went, but Lyzänder had not wanted to look a gift-horse in the mouth, though, thinking back on it, trusting an illusionist goblin and his obviously-fake Guild credentials was definitely on him…

The vicious breath attacks stopped, perhaps because both fire and decaying breath had kicked up such a storm of dust and ash that he was momentarily obscured from its sight. He could turn tail and run, but it was likely the beast would track him and he wasn’t that fast of a runner anyway. Instead, he decided to trust his superior magical powers to defeat this calamitous quarry, and, with no companions to be wary of, he could go hog-wild.

He squared his shoulders and grinned confidently, then began to work his way through the incantation for the forbidden spell, the most powerful in his extensive catalogue of destructive incantations: Apocalypse Beam.

As he swished-and-flicked his wand around, the air began to vibrate with building potency, but then, as the smoke and ash cloud cleared and the Goose3 caught sight of him, his wand began to shrink and droop, the magical power seeming to leak from it. Like, literally leaking from it as a goopy honey-thick fluid of fluorescent arcane-blue.

“Huh… This normally doesn’t happen to me,” he remarked, but then remembered the Enchantress’ curse. As the Honking Calamity was about to tear him to shreds with its three heads, his wand suddenly refilled with vitality, but then continued to become more-and-more engorged, before, finally, it blew up.

Spectating cancelled due to: Team Elimination

A tremendous quake shook all the trees around the settlement and made Imu let out a terrified squeal when the Guild Office released an ominous creak.

I flew out of the Guild Master’s body and soared high into the air. In the distance, perhaps three-hundred metres east-northeast of my roughly two-hundred-metre-in-radius demesne, a massive blue fireball was climbing into the air and the clearing there was probably a smouldering crater now.

I slowly descended back down to earth, hoping the Adventurers had items I could gift my Adventurers when they returned from their discovery quest.

“I’ve been wondering,” Imu started, having left the Guild Office perhaps out of fear of its collapse, “what is that pond? Why is the Goose3 using it as its den? Do you know where it is in the forest?”

I had a sudden, horrible realisation. It hadn’t occurred to me earlier, since I had never seen the pond from a whomanoid’s perspective before. “That was my pond! The pond where I was killed! The one ruled over by Toadicus!”

“I have some bad news then.”

“What?”

“Did you notice all those dead toads in the water?”

“Oh no! Those were all my friends, past lovers, and sister-cousins!”

“Probably,” he said, wincing a bit at my descriptions.

“The Hydra-Goose will pay for this!” I announced ominously.

“Oh… so it’s only now that you actually want to punish it? Not for harassing us since day one?? Not for literally killing you in your past life!? Honestly, what’s wrong with you!?”