Imu was leaned back in the wicker-chair on the shore of the paradise realm he had been teleported to. Goldie sat next to him, lapping up her eighth bowl of strawberry daiquiri. He was unsure if she drank it because she genuinely liked the taste or because it looked like blood. Toads were genuinely beginning to terrify him.
He leant back more and let out an audible sigh of contentment. The magic imbued into the wicker-chair made it capable of vibrating such that it released all the tension in his body and made his chubby flesh soft like a newborn babe’s.
With a yawn, he took a peek around and made the big mistake of locking eyes with a woman who lay only a few metres away on her own massaging wicker-chair.
“Oh no…”
“Hi there! Would you like to hear about our Lady and Saviour, Lady Light?”
“Please, I’m on a vacation! And so are you, by the look of things!”
She got up from her chair, and, sure enough, it was the very same Missionary that had found their town and nearly caused a very irate Goddess to wipe them from existence.
“Lady Light teaches us that there is no such thing as a day of rest, when the world is still inhabited by infidels!”
“But you must know that I’m not one of her witless flock of brainwashed humans! Look at me! I’m clearly a Guiding Fairy! This is clearly not the Mortal Realm either! I mean, how did you even come to be here in the first place!? I thought only people like me were allowed to traverse the figment between realms!”
“My Lady was so pleased with my work performance that she sent me here! She’s forgotten to send me back to the Mortal Realm though, so I’ve been using the opportunity to preach to all those who come here.”
“I should have known this place was too good to be true… It’s a blessed tourist trap for indoctrination!”
“Now, listen or I’ll purge you!”
Imu looked down at his toady companion that sat next to his wicker-chair and whispered,
“Goldie, you don’t perchance find Missionary flesh to be delectable, do you?”
The mustard-yellow toad croaked dully in response.
“Didn’t think so…”
“Gathered faithful, today I have come to preach the good word of our Lady Light, the holiest of holy. It is by her divine grace that you today are allowed to prosper!
Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
“I say to you, gathered sheeplings, would you like to shed your woollen coats and attain enlightenment!?”
Imu got up from his wicker-chair, his soft belly-fat overhanging the rim of his bathing shorts.
“I can’t take this anymore! I’ve listened to your asinine sermons so many times! No more! NO MORE I SAY!”
“That sounds dangerously like heresy to my ears,” the Missionary warned, her eyes narrowing. He did notice that she was also wearing a bathing suit though… clearly she wasn’t as devout as she claimed herself.
“I don’t care what you think! Fuck your Goddess! She’s a total bully!”
She looked incensed, “YOU DARE!”
“What are you gonna do to me, Judetta? You have no power here! This is a violence-free zone! There will be no purging!”
“Just wait until I get back to the Mortal Realm! You will definitely be purged for badmouthing my Lady!”
“As if that even matters! Have you not heard? Toad just became a usurper God and all temples within his expanding lands will be turned to revering him and Toadkin as a master race!”
Her narrow eyes narrowed further, as though she didn’t quite believe him.
“But you’ll be stuck here forever. Admit it, your Lady forgot about you! It’s more than likely that she put you here after embarrassing herself by being unable to smite our System Doll.”
“No! She wouldn’t! She’s like super caring and really kind!”
“She’s only nice when you do what she says and don’t question her.”
“Well… yeah, she’s super wise, so obviously she wouldn’t care what us meaningless mortals think!”
“Honestly… that logic is so flawed I can’t even believe you don’t find it absurd yourself.”
Judetta looked poised to argue back, but then her posture slumped and she suddenly seemed really defeated. Imu knew that he had struck a nerve. After all, there was no way any sensible human didn’t have some apprehensions about their lives, particularly when they were members of an insanely-fanatical cult.
A few days later, after spending a long time basically acting as Judetta’s therapist to help her deal with all her worries and troubles caused by her religious cult, a new person appeared, though one who was already familiar to him, unfortunately.
“Emo Imu! How’s it going! It’s been centuries, hasn’t it!?”
“Bel? What are you doing here? Aren’t you helping that Volcano Core in the northwestern sea?”
“Oh, he died. Cataclysmic self-destruction. Quite spectacular! Unless you’re mortal and can die, you know, cause then it must’ve sucked.”
Imu sighed. Belamouranthyne was a Fairy who had evolved from a Fire-attributed Dungeon Core about a millennium back, but instead of joining Deathheim Inc., she had started working for Papa Magma to specifically guide fire or fire-adjacent Cores. Given the proclivities of such cores, most had the tendency to catastrophically self-implode or meltdown, if they didn’t end up being destroyed by nearby civilisations, due to their detrimental impact on the local ecosystems. In fact, Undead Cores were less likely to be targeted than Fire Cores, given that zombies and skeletons could provide free tireless labour to the nearby kingdoms and thus were often seen as a boon, unless the Church of Light got involved…
“But Papa Magma gave you a vacation anyway?”
“Oh no, he sent me here to fetch you.”
“Wait, why?”
“It’s because of your Core. It came across one of his favourite Dungeons.”
Imu felt a ball of ice form in his stomach, “And? What happened?”
“He… erm… ate it? I guess? That’s what I was told anyway.”
“My Core… ate another Core? Like an actual Dungeon Core?”
“As I understand it, his army ransacked the entire region and ousted the local Earl, then found a poor Dungeon who lived inside a mountain, and, well, they tore their way through it and then ate the Core…”
Imu sighed deeply. “Alright, I’ll see what I can do about it.” All-in-all, this had not been a very good vacation.