“I completely forgot he was in here,” Imu commented, looking at the sad figure who cradled a broken lute in his arms.

“Do you normally make a habit of locking musicians away?” Bel asked.

“Why are you still here?” the Myling asked suspiciously.

“Oh, did I forget to mention that I’ll be joining your team as of immediately?”

“What?” Imu and I both said at once.

“That’s impossible!” Imu protested. “Cores are not supposed to have more than one Guiding Fairy!”

“Papa Magma and Deathheim collaborated on this, you know. Toad was deemed a bit too chaotic for just one fairy, no offense Imu.”

“I can’t believe what I’m hearing!”

“Welcome onboard,” I told her, she lifted her sunglasses briefly to flash me a look of her bright eyes along with a satisfied grin.

“Don’t indulge her, Toady!”

“What can you do?” I replied. “Even your boss decided this was the best way forward.”

“You do understand that the Gods are basically treating you like a walking apocalypse, right?”

“They just don’t understand my brilliance,” I remarked.

Bel shared a glance with Imu, then asked, “Is he being serious?”

“Unfortunately yes.”

“Enough bickering,” I decided, turning back to face the bard, who, disturbingly, had his cell right next to the four that the Fleshcrafter had turned into a laboratorium, with the Jailers seeming completely disinterested in the fact that he was working on live specimens right under their noses. Though it was not immediately obvious, the Bard, Reve Div, had also been worked on.

“Bard, get up!”

As the despondent musician got up, he left the broken lute behind and walked up to the cell door. I was worried of how exactly the Fleshcrafter had worked on him, so I performed a Limited Appraisal on him:

Name: Reve Div

Occupation: The Voice of an Absolute

Species: Half-Halfling Half-Orc Half-Musical-Instrument

Level: 19/100

Alignment: Music-flows-in-his-veins

Faction: The Keening One’s Choir

“Why did the King insist we bring this guy?” Bel wondered. “That Appraisal raises some serious red flags, plus, I don’t like the way that skinless madman is staring at us while smiling.”

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“Why haven’t you executed Goddard yet?” Imu asked, scowling at the stone-masked Fleshcrafter.

“Well, I owe him for making me this body, even if he might have colluded with the Therapist to overthrow my Toadkin’s rule of the city.”

“♪Thank you for letting me free!♪” the Bard announced gleefully. The way his voice made the air vibrate and the stones of the Gaol shake put us all on edge. But then one of the Jailers came up and shoved him towards the stairs that led up to freedom.

“Is this gonna be alright?” Bel wondered out loud.

“What’s the worst that can happen?” I replied.

“Toad! Stop saying that! It literally always gets worse!”

After sending Bel off to begin working on the Evolution Requirement involving the collection of additional humanoid species and figuring out how to make them thrive within my territories, Imu and I set out from Toad Town, heading north.

The bard with the sing-song voice of a fallen angel clung to my body, while Imu rode atop Goldie as usual. According to the reports of the Adventurers, who had come into my settlement in droves lately, the Hydra-Goose had been spotted to the north, where it had laid waste to a few farmsteads.

Using Imu’s inky shadow portals, we crossed many kilometres in hardly any time, accelerating our progress significantly.

Towards noon, we set eyes upon the remains of the farmsteads we had been told of, where we found that, rather than abandoning the remains, its inhabitations were in the midst of repairing the damage and replanting their devoured crops.

Imu quickly asked them if they had seen where the Honking Calamity had headed next and the oldest of the farmers pointed us west-northwest. As thanks, I summoned six minions from the ground and set them to gathering resources and aid the farmers in their efforts to rebuild.

“That was actually a good deed,” Imu remarked with great confusion as we moved in the next direction, hopping in-and-out of inky portals.

“Humans are a species of people within my territory,” I told him, “So I need to make sure they thrive.”

“I thought you hated humans,” he replied.

“I don’t hate them just because they’re inferior in every way.”

“Oh… wait is this one of those Big Brother complexes then?”

“If I was related to them, I would have eaten them to spare my parents and sister-cousins the shame of being related to such weak stock.”

“I don’t know if I should be relieved that you’re showing forced kindness towards humans or worried that once the evolution goal has been reached that some insane decimation will follow…”

After following the trail for a few hours, we came upon an identical scene as the other farmstead and I once again summoned minions to help the homeless farmers, while Imu looked on with a complex expression on his chubby face.

From the second destroyed farmstead, we headed north-northeast and eventually reached a large town by the name of Rooskeld, the inhabitations of which seemed to be having a festival. When Imu inquired about the Hydra-Goose, many citizens excitedly told us about how the large monster had arrived to their town, but instead of visiting ruin upon them, its Tamer, a Barista, had begun brewing delicious coffee and handing it out to the townsfolk in exchange for whatever bits of food they could spare for his hungry mount.

“A Barista has tamed the most dangerous monster on the entire continent,” Imu mumbled confused.

“He must be pretty strong,” I replied.

“Maybe he is controlling it with his esoteric powers over this vile White Elf beverage known as ‘coffee’.”

“It’s also possible the Hydra-Goose has finally calmed down,” I added. “Maybe its mass-murder spree was just like how an adolescent duck will slap-fight other males for dominance.”

“Don’t be absurd. It’s clearly a being of such immense rage that these people being spared must simply be a fluke.”

Following a few hours of interviewing the citizens, we headed a bit further north from the town to where a great clearing with a single thousand-year-old tree lay. In front of its enormously-wide trunk lay a five-headed Monster.

WARNING: Activating unrestricted God-like Appraisal!

Imu looked at me annoyed. “You’ve got to be kidding me—”