*Ring-ring*

A sharp, familiar tone echoed in Boxxy’s mind. Technically it had been doing so for quite some time, but the shapeshifter had been systematically ignoring it for a few days straight. The shapeshifter knew full well that an incoming call from Demons ‘R’ Us was likely an emergency and that not responding to it in a timely manner was extremely ill-advised. However, in its defense, it was far too busy being depressed, apathetic, and stubborn. The emotional cocktail had turned the terrifying creature into a formless blob of doubt and self-pity.

*Ring-ring*

Yet even in that state, the call from Beyond was able to steadily get on its nerves. There was something innately upsetting about that insistent mental ringing. Whether it was the tone, volume, duration, or another factor altogether, it felt as if it got more annoying and unbearable with each repetition. Any other mortal would have likely bashed their head open on a boulder ages ago just to make it stop. Boxxy’s mind was far sturdier than most, so it had taken far longer for it to reach its breaking point.

*Click*

“Ugh… Yes?” it grumbled inwardly.

“Shit!” Carl cursed loudly. “Nigel-damnit, Boxxy! I almost forgot I had you on the other line.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Well, congratulations. You set a new company record for longest time taken to answer.”

“Mhm.”

“So, yeah. Listen. I got three problems in my office that won’t stop moaning at me.”

“That’s nice.”

“Yes, I mean you,” Carl’s voice became distant. “Yes, it picked up. No, you can’t- Hold on a sec, Boxxy.”

*Click*

The demon’s voice was replaced by waiting music as he, presumably, had an argument with the shapeshifter’s familiars. It seemed clear that they’d bitched at their agent until he did something about their master. At first they hadn’t known whether Boxxy had made it back or not, as the Demons ‘R’ Us line couldn’t connect to outer space. They had calmed down once Carl’s instruments showed that the abomination was once more within service range. However, the Warlock had yet to summon any of its familiars, and Gertrude couldn’t broadcast its whereabouts without them being there to serve as her eyes and ears. As such, Xera, Kora, and Drea had no idea what their master’s situation was, which had driven them frustrated, annoyed, and concerned, respectively.

*Click*

“Right then,” Carl came back on. “What’s going on, buddy?”

“Nothing.”

“Uh-huh. And I’m actually a professional yodeler,” he responded sarcastically.

The insightful devil had immediately noticed something was quite off about his client. Even while Boxxy was in a foul mood, it had never responded with those dispassionate grunts. Normally the demon wouldn’t give a damn about the mortals he spoke with, but he actually liked Boxxy. He’d stated multiple times that the shapeshifter had been the ideal client, and that was still true. Well, aside from having three insistent familiars bothering him constantly, but that was mostly beyond the monster’s control.

Of course, Carl knew better than to openly admit to caring about the murderous meat-blob.

“Okay, listen. You usually have those three out and about at any given opportunity, doing your bidding and whatnot. Your usage statistics are dropping sharply, and it’s making me look bad as your liaison. So, what’s your problem?”

“Oh… Nothing… and everything,” Boxxy responded passively.

“Uhh, alright. Care to elaborate?”

“Nah.”

“Do I need to start ringing again?”

“… I just don’t see the point.”

“To what?”

“Everything. Anything.”

“Ah. I see. You were forced to confront your own mortality, eh?”

“That’s one way to put it.”

The situation was finally starting to make sense. Carl had heard from Boxxy’s group that it had been ejected into the silent void of space. He also knew from his experience with mortals that spending extended time in total isolation and sensory deprivation was torture to the rational mind. With nothing else to turn to, one’s thoughts would inevitably drift towards existential dread, usually followed by depression. Carl was somewhat surprised that Boxxy’s peculiar mentality would submit to such a basic and mundane issue, but he wasn’t about to explore the matter. Monster psychology was not part of his job description.

“Wait, so you’ve just been moping around this whole time?”

“Yep.”

“For three whole weeks?”

“I guess.”

Indeed, it had been twenty four days since Boxxy splashed down in the ocean. It hadn’t willingly moved a muscle that entire time, choosing instead to focus on the sights and sounds of the deep in an effort to tune out its depressing thoughts. The endeavor had been… minimally successful.

“Wow. Okay. Moving on. Where are you right now?”

“The ocean.”

“Where specifically, in the ocean?”

“In a leviathan’s stomach.”

“You… what?”

“What?”

“How did you end up in a leviathan’s stomach?”

“I got swallowed.”

There was a deep sigh from the other end of the line.

“By Jigsaw’s left pancreas, we’re back to this again,” Carl grumbled quietly. “Anyway, I take it you’re in no immediate danger?”

An odd thing to ask someone who just said they’d been swallowed whole, but knowing Boxxy, the demon figured it would take a lot more than some stomach acid to actually kill it.

“Yeah, I’m good.”

Carl’s guess had been right on the money, but there was more to it than that. Even though Boxxy’s mind was unwilling to move a muscle, its body moved on its own to ensure its survival. It was a situation akin to employees at a store putting in extra unpaid hours to keep the franchise afloat despite the incompetent management. All of that boiled down to Boxxy’s amorphous flesh autonomously soaking up whatever nutrients were within the leviathan’s stomach. Meanwhile its absurd constitution and vitality were able to easily outpace the damage caused by the leviathan’s digestive fluids. In summary, the shapeshifter was completely fine. If anything, the massive sea monster was the one suffering in that situation. It had, in a way, swallowed the world’s most ravenous tapeworm.

“Well, if you’re not in any rush, would you get these three out of my office already?” Carl demanded.

“No,” the shapeshifter responded curtly.

“Why not?”

“I don’t feel like it.”

“And why would that be?”

“Because there’d be no point. They’d just get sent back eventually.”

“Well, yeah. So?”

“So why should I… Actually, Carl?”

“Hm?”

“You’re a centuries-old demon, right?”

“Last I checked.”

Some part of Boxxy had realized something. If it had reached this whole existential crisis thing despite being not even four years old, then surely someone of Carl’s age would’ve been forced to confront the pointlessness of it all. Actually, the same could be said of all demons, yet none of the ones Boxxy had met were struggling with the big question. Could they have perhaps figured out something the shapeshifter hadn’t even considered? They would have had an absurd amount of time to do so, after all.

“How do you keep going?” it asked.

“What do you mean?”

“The whole existence thing. You must know that the world will die eventually. Your god will disappear, and you’ll probably go with it.”

“Oh. Yeah, I guess that’s true.”

“Then you agree that, in the grand scale of things, nothing you do actually matters.”

“I suppose.”

“Yet you keep doing the Demons ‘R’ Us thing.”

“That I do.”

“How do you do it?”

“I don’t know what to tell you, buddy,” the devil responded. “If you ask me, mulling over them cosmic quandaries isn’t gonna fill any quotas or relieve my boredom. So, I just focus on my work and partake in whatever gossip’s floating around the Beyond.”

“But nothing you do matters, so why bother with any of it?”

“Because I want to? That should be fairly obvious.”

“But-! Why?!”

Though it wasn’t visible through the interdimensional connection, Carl smiled a bit at that outburst.

“I think you’re looking at this backwards, Boxxy.”

“… What do you mean?”

“If nothing you do truly matters, then why not go nuts and have some fun with it? Nothing lasts forever, so there are no real consequences to your actions. Worst case scenario is you die, something that’s gonna happen anyway, right? Well, actually, worst case scenario is you violate your contract and endanger your familiars’ souls. Trust me, you’d wish you were dead if that happened.”

“Uh…”

“Point is, just because you think your existence is meaningless doesn’t mean you have to spend it wallowing in unceasing agony. Do something wild. Try something new. For instance, you could summon those three inside that beast’s belly just to see what’ll happen. Heh, knowing how rotten Xerababadubuth is, she might actually give the thing indigestion.”

Boxxy actually liked that idea. As a creature of cruelty and malice, it quite enjoyed the suffering of others. It wasn’t buying Carl’s explanation of ‘nothing matters, so do whatever,’ but it had to admit the devil had made some good points. That and the conversation had given the creature an idea. A purpose, even.

“Okay. Thanks, Carl.”

“Sure thing, buddy. Just, let’s not try to make this a regular thing, yeah? I don’t get paid to do counseling.”

*Click*

“You get paid?” Boxxy asked, a split-second too late. “Ah… Whatever.”

Feeling just a tiny bit reinvigorated, the shapeshifter willed itself to move for the first time in a while. It began the summoning process, lighting up the leviathan’s cavernous stomach in the process. Its host must have noticed something was going as it suddenly shifted, tossing the abomination around a bit and interrupting its Skill before it could finish. It tried again, only to reach the exact same outcome. Feeling immensely ticked off at these events, Boxxy had itself a violent tantrum as it thrashed around its fleshy prison. Which, considering the creature’s power, would have been enough to flatten a castle from the inside out.

The leviathan that had swallowed the shapeshifter was an immense three hundred meters long. This was nowhere near the two kilometers that the legendary Big Smoke boasted, but it was still over a hundred times larger than Boxxy. Yet, despite the overwhelming size difference, the abomination’s shenanigans still managed to upset the leviathan’s stomach enough to make the creature vomit out the contents of its bowels. After releasing a few tons of puke onto the ocean floor, the massive sea-serpent swam away while letting out a rather pitiful-sounding groan.

Now freed from the digestive cavity, Boxxy resumed its attempts to use Summon Familiar. The Skill went off without a hitch and Xera’s scandalous figure materialized in a flash of light. She started flailing around and let out a few muffled screams towards the shapeshifter, who only then remembered it was, in fact, at the bottom of the ocean. It still had some spare breathing gear in its Storage, but it really didn’t feel like sorting through it. The tiny bit of motivation that talk with Carl had given it was already rapidly diminishing.

So, Boxxy did something it hadn’t done in years - it completely evacuated the contents of its pocket dimension. Hundreds of devices, vials, weapons, pieces of jewelry, dragon parts, and other miscellanea flooded the environment. Within a few seconds Xera found herself almost literally buried beneath the world’s most expensive junk pile. She frantically rummaged through it for almost an entire minute until she spotted a familiar-looking choker. She put it on and started gasping and coughing as the water in her lungs was replaced by air. Once she’d caught her breath, she turned towards the abomination and bowed gracefully.

“Thank you, Master,” she said with a smile. “That was quite an enjoyable game.”

Said master did not respond, however, as it was already in the middle of another Summon Familiar. The third one of the day, if the six-armed muscle-head and the recently emptied mana potions floating around it were any indication. The djinn was unsure of what Boxxy had in mind, so she quietly got two more underwater breathing items and presented them to Kora and then Drea. The other familiars were just as confused as to what was going on, especially since their master remained completely silent no matter how much the demons think-talked to it. It just floated in place, its amorphous flesh spreading out like a blotch of ink filled with teeth and eyes.

“So, uh…” Kora awkwardly crossed her arms. “Boss isn’t ordering us around like it usually does. It doesn’t feel right. I don’t like it, it’s weird.”

“That’s putting it lightly,” Xera clenched her fists. “Master is supposed to be relentless and cruel, with an undeniable will that dominates everything that stands in its way. Its very presence should make me quiver with awe and fear. Not… this!”

“Right?” the hoarder demon nodded. “It’s like the boss turned into an old sponge or something.”

“Master seems to be going through a rough patch,” Drea chimed in. “Remember what Carl told us?”

“I do,” the djinn sighed. “I just wasn’t expecting it to be this… lifeless.”

The trio had a look at their surroundings while they figured out what to do, and immediately spotted something of interest resting on the nearby seafloor. It was a colossal and all-too-familiar elder dragon bone covered in a fresh layer of monster vomit. This was doubtlessly the ‘souvenir’ that Ambrosia had dragged off of the Shattered Isles in the first week of the Dragon Festival. It looked as if something massive had been chewing on it since then, though it hadn’t made much progress in getting through the bone’s incredibly tough outer shell.

Still, that leviathan had managed to put a few sizable cracks and holes in the thing, causing rivulets of dragon gravy too ooze out of those openings and into the ocean. That runoff had been the delicious ‘mystery juice’ that Boxxy had initially encountered when it returned from space. It had subconsciously followed the stream of tastiness to its source, which was how the shapeshifter wound up in the leviathan’s belly. It hadn’t been the only one to do so, either. Hundreds of oceanic monsters had been lured in by the irresistibly delicious substance, though most had given up once they realized a leviathan had claimed the source.

Granted, the familiars hadn’t actually seen the massive sea monster, but they had overheard the word ‘leviathan’ from Carl. It didn’t take much to figure the rest out from there.

“Is this why the boss is bummed out?” Kora pointed at the bone.

“I don’t think so,” Xera pondered. “If some overgrown sea-slug stole its tasty, it would make the Master furious, not depressed.”

“Still, it loves the stuff, right? Maybe it’ll cheer up if it has a snack.”

The djinn’s eyes lit up at that last word.

“Not you, jizz-for-brains,” Kora rolled her eyes. “I meant from the bone.”

“Uhm, this isn’t the sort of thing that can be fixed so easily,” Drea chimed in. “Trying to ‘cheer up’ the master won’t accomplish anything.”

“Nonsense,” Xera insisted. “Master is just having one of its mood swings. It’ll bounce back in no time.”

“… Fine,” the spider-girl relented. “I’ll go get some samples.”

The stalker wanted to argue her point, but realized it was a pointless endeavor.

As demons, all of them were entities born from a psychic cluster of negative thoughts and emotions. Stalkers in particular had sorrow, loneliness, and fear mixed in with them, hence why most of them were socially awkward and shy by demon standards. This origin afforded Drea an innate understanding of depression and just how crippling it could be for a mortal, but Xera and Kora lacked that ‘luxury.’ The slovenly slut and the greedy brute were born from and molded by a completely different set of negative concepts, which made them quite ignorant to the nature of their master’s ‘mood swing.’

Drea therefore decided it would be quicker and easier for everyone involved if she just went along with Kora’s suggestions. Besides, it wasn’t as if the spider-girl had any better ideas. She might have understood the severity of Boxxy’s condition, but had no idea how to go about treating it. She was doubtful whether a bit of divinely delicious dragon gravy would actually do the trick, but there was a non-zero chance that it could work. It certainly couldn’t hurt, not to mention that she was rather looking forward to indulging in some of that divinely delicious dragon gravy herself.

Collecting samples of the stuff was easy enough. She picked up the Spectral Cowl from Boxxy’s disgorged stash and used the Artifact-grade cloak to phase through one of the cracks. She found a hollow spot just large enough for her to fit and began scooping out lumps of that sublime bone-nectar. The first several handfuls were immediately devoured, sending Drea into a state of bliss that bordered on carnal. It wasn’t until that initial high had worn off that she remembered she was supposed to be helping Boxxy, not herself.

When she emerged from the dragon bone, she had about twenty head-sized spider-silk satchels under the ghostly cloak. Her belly had also become quite plump, but she did her best to hide it underneath the magical garment. She swam over to where Boxxy was drifting and presented one of the webbed bags to it. The shapeshifter showed absolutely no reaction. Puzzled and concerned, the stalker used one of her clawed digits to rip the layered threads open, allowing the dense and gooey contents to flow into the surrounding water.

It took only a fraction of a second for a toothed snake-like tentacle snapped around the gravy sample. The whole thing happened so fast that Drea barely managed to pull her hand out of the way before it got gobbled up as well. Overcome by a strangely fuzzy feeling, she tried the same thing and got the exact same result. She had a full blown smile by the time the third sample was presented. Drea had internally interpreted this interaction as her hand-feeding Boxxy, which she found to be surprisingly fun and satisfying.

“See?” Kora smiled smugly. “Boss’ll be good as new in no time.”

“I don’t know…” Xera said with concern. “I think Dreaheath might have had a point.”

“What? It’s moving around, ain’t it?”

“Yeah, but look at its eyes.”

“Uh… Which ones?”

It was a valid question, as the abomination had quite a few of those sporadically situated all over its body.

“Any of them.”

“Oh-kay? What about them?” the hoarder shrugged.

“There’s no life in them.”

Indeed, though the extremities were quite lively while Drea fed them, the monster they were attached to looked completely dead inside. Whenever she wasn’t doing something else, Xera spent nearly every waking moment gazing lovingly at her master. The insightful demon had gotten quite prolific at interpreting its mood and intentions just from looking at its eyes. She could accurately discern the creature’s various states of mind, such as curious, covetous, angry, hungry, happy, entertained, bored, determined, or aroused. Granted, that last one was entirely wishful thinking on her part, but this was the first time she’d seen its glare so vacant, unfocused, and apathetic.

In short, though the limbs chased Drea’s offerings, it wasn’t because the mind was telling them to.

“I don’t get it,” Kora frowned, “but the boss hasn’t slapped you silly for being an uppity cunt, so you’re probably right.”

The question of ‘So what do we do now?’ hung heavily in the ensuing silence.

“We should get Boxxy back to Ambrosia,” Drea suggested, having finished with her fun. “She’s the motherly type, maybe she’ll know what to do.”

“I’m not sure I agree with that, but it’s certainly better than letting it waste away down here,” Xera weighed in.

“Right, that too,” the stalker nodded. “About that, though, any idea where ‘here’ is?”

“Well, that bone is there, so we shouldn’t be very far from where the Shattered Isles appeared.”

“A leviathan had it, though. That thing could’ve carried it to anywhere in the Shimmering Ocean.”

“I think we should focus on getting to dry land,” Xera suggested. “Shouldn’t be too difficult to find someone or something to orient us towards one of Master’s dungeons.”

“Right, the dungeon network’s Nexus Access,” Drea remembered. “Almost forgot about that. Still, we have no idea which way ‘dry land’ is.”

“Fuck, that’s a good point.”

The two of them went silent again as they pondered this predicament. There seemed to be no way of telling where in the world they were. In fact, now that they thought about it, it seemed quite strange that Boxxy had landed so close to its ‘souvenir.’ Admittedly the box-minded flesh-heap had a history of extremely unlikely coincidences, but this one seemed a bit too much. Terrania was a vast place, and the shapeshifter had been drifting towards it for more than a week. Even assuming that Boxxy was lured towards the bone by the stuff leaking from it, the odds of the shapeshifter making a splash-down like that seemed unbelievably tiny.

As in, Xera literally could not believe her master had wound up here because of luck.

“Tch.”

The djinn clicked her tongue in frustration. That line of thinking wasn’t going to help her figure out their position, so she dropped it and focused on the issue at hand.

“Hmm, maybe Master was carrying around some navigation tools,” she speculated. “We should search its… things… for…”

Her words trailed off as she looked towards the nearby pile of stuff and saw Kora frantically chucking one thing after the next into her extra-dimensional Vault. The green-haired hoarder noticed her incredulous stare and gave a confused look right back.

“What?” Kora glanced around. “Is there monster vomit on my armor or something?”

“Don’t ‘what’ me, you dumb shit!” the djinn shouted through the thought-link. “Why are you stuffing your pockets with Master’s belongings?!”

“Why not?”

“We have important things to discuss!”

“Like what?”

“Like where we are! Or how we’re going to get back to the lair!”

“I mean, it’s not like I can help with that,” the hoarder triple-shrugged. “You’re supposed to be the brainy bitch here, at least when you’re not thinking of getting dicked. You’ll come up with something.”

Xera didn’t have a rebuttal to that surprisingly good point.

“I just figured I might as well pick all of this stuff up in the meantime,” Kora added. “Better than leaving it to some random fish or whatever.”

The djinn would never admit it, but that was a sound argument. Boxxy would never had haphazardly dumped out its Storage if not for its current state of mind. It was safe to assume it would want all of those things back once it was back to normal, especially considering the twenty or so Artifacts in the pile. And since neither she nor Drea had a better alternative, Kora’s Vault Skill seemed like the best way to carry them around.

“… Just be quick about it,” Xera grumbled.

“Then stop bitching at me,” Kora rolled her eyes and resumed looting.

In actuality, the hoarder was hoping to pull one over on Boxxy. There was a non-zero chance the shapeshifter would forget to ask for its stuff back, in which case Kora would get to keep all of those valuables. As for Drea, she had caught a glimpse of something while those two were arguing. She swam over to the other end of the sunken hoard and started rummaging through a pile of treasure - assorted coins and jewelry looted from that dwarven expedition. She found a spherical crystalline object about a meter in diameter buried amidst the valuables. After digging it out and lifting it up, she immediately recognized what it was.

“Huh. Hey, girls?” she called out to the others. “Can’t we just use this?”

It was the spare dungeon core that Boxxy had brought to the Dragon Festival.