At first, everything was white. With each blink of my eyes, more and more of my surroundings began to appear. Green patches suddenly stretched across the ground.

“Grass?” I mumbled to myself.

From the patches came flowers, and from those flowers came… lollipops? I shut my eyes and shook my head. When I opened them again, it confirmed my initial assessment. Yep, still lollipops.

Where the hell was I?

“Good. You’re finally awake.” A voice called from behind me. I turned around, recognizing Keke’s short tone.

“Keke. It’s good to—” My throat caught, and my mouth hung agape.

“What? Why are you looking at me like that?”

It was Keke, alright. Well, it was her disembodied head. It rolled along in the grass like an oblong bowling ball. Keke’s head turned toward me, and I backpedaled in terror.

“What’s got you so anxious? I hope your fever hasn’t gotten worse. Come closer, I can’t feel when you’re all the way up there.”

“What. The. Fu—”

“Don’t worry, Matt! Everything will be okay!” Cannoli’s demure voice rang in my ears. My heart beat fast, given wings at the thought of seeing her again.

As I turned, my stomach leapt to my throat. “Eck!”

What confronted me sounded like Cannoli. It even had the same cheerful gait as Cannoli. But she was at least three times as tall as me. In her hands was a syringe half my height with a needle long enough—and thick enough—to kill me.

A twisted smile tugged at the corners of her mouth. “Are you going to be a good boy? Don’t make me put you down.”

“You’re— You’re not going to stick that in me, are you?”

“Heh.” Her lips curled upward, baring brilliant white teeth.

“This is insane! Why are you doing this?” I took a step back from the enormous Cannoli monster. “What the hell’s going on here?”

“Yeesh, would you quiet down already?” I felt a chill run down my spine as the dismembered head of Keke bumped up against my ankle. I pushed the head away with the back of my heel and turned around.

“I’m not going to just stand here and take this! Nothing here makes any sense! What happened to you?”

“Ugh, how annoying.” The bowling ball grumbled. “Do you know how annoying it is to have to explain everything to you over and over? Maybe we should just ditch this loser. What do you think, Cannoli?”

My neck twisted around in panic.

Cannoli plucked one of the lollipops from the grass, and it morphed into a size more befitting of the giantess. “That’s a pity. I miss having a toy.” She licked it suggestively.

A lot of emotions warred in my body.

“Well then,” Keke said, rolling backward, then around until she was between Cannoli and me.

Keke began to tremble, and, one by one, eight furry black legs jutted out from where the neck should’ve been. The head was now walking on eight legs.

Like a spider. Kill me.

Words could not express what I was feeling. Maybe the goddess would still take me back to purgatory. Maybe—just maybe—an island of catgirls wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.

“We can always find another toy.” Two of Keke’s spindly legs moved to groom her dark hair.

I was paralyzed on the spot but couldn’t help my morbid curiosity. “What do you mean?”

“Boy, you sure do ask a lot of questions,” said the irritated Keke-spider.

A sadistic gleam glittered in Cannoli’s eyes. “I don’t mind a curious boy. That makes for a wonderful plaything.” Cannoli licked her lips, and her cheeks flushed a bright red. “Oh, the things I could teach you.”

My toes curled. What had sounded like a dream just a few hours before now felt like my worst nightmare.

“Yes, he would be fun to tag team. It’s been a long time, hasn’t it?” Keke’s long legs crept up my lower back. I shivered and withheld a scream.

Cannoli closed her eyes and nodded, slipping the lollipop between her lips. The syringe bobbed idly in her hand, threatening to tumble free and run me through at any second. “I long for it.”

“I only wish we had a better specimen.” The Keke-spider danced around my legs in a strange, almost upbeat rhythm. Her condescending gaze and wry smile punctuated her words. “Since you need answers to even the most basic of questions, I’ll have to assume you aren’t too intelligent.”

“Big words from a talking spider.” I was getting really tired of their bullshit.

“Spider? Geez, you really are stupid, aren’t you?” Keke’s mouth continued to move, but the sound was muffled, growing distant over time and becoming increasingly incoherent. “I— not— Cannoli an—”

“I can’t hear you.”

“Wha—? Yo— stop wi—”

There was an intense throbbing in my forehead, and I massaged it with my fingers. I couldn’t keep my eyes open. Pieces of the environment, of Keke, of Cannoli, all started to vanish. The last thing I remembered was Keke crawling all over me.

Too bad that she was a spider.

When I came to, Keke was inches away from my face. There was a pause while I worked to comprehend what had just happened.

“Guh!” I kicked and thrashed away from Keke, the memory of the spider’s spindly legs around my body still fresh in my fevered state.

“Uwaahhhh!” she cried out.

“Ahhhhhh!” I screamed and pointed at her.

“Wh-wh-what’s wrong?!” Another voice. Cannoli’s voice. I found her sitting in a corner of the room, a look of horror on her face.

I pointed to her next. “Ahhhhhhh!”

The two girls sputtered and trembled as I pointed from one to the other, unsure if I was still dreaming. Keke quickly backed away to stand next to Cannoli. From their perspective, I’m sure they saw a man who’d lost his marbles.

I jumped from the bed and snatched a nearby broom, wielding it like a greatsword. I’d be damned if Keke grew her legs again and Cannoli towered over me with the deathly syringe.

“What are you doing?” Keke demanded.

“M-Matt! Put that down, please?” Cannoli begged.

After a while, my mind started to settle down, and reality was making its welcome return. My heavy breathing slowed, and I put two and two together. At last, I put down the broom and sighed. A cool breeze wafted through the window, and I realized I was dressed in just my boxers.

“Where are my clothes?” The familiar gnawing in my leg throbbed painfully as the adrenaline left my blood. I sank back to the bed.

“We’re out of [Combat Mode], and we wanted to check your leg. We couldn’t do that through your pants,” Keke said matter-of-factly.

“Y-you really had us scared for a moment there,” said the shaking Cannoli, her fingers writhing.

“Sorry,” I said with a sigh, running my fingers through my hair. Sunlight crept past the edges of the drawn curtains. I pulled the blanket over my lap, feeling more self-conscious than usual. Keke’s long stares were not helping. “How long was I out for?”

“All night,” said Keke, folding her arms with a look of concern. “It’s been a while since I’ve seen someone sleep that long. I was beginning to wonder if you’d be okay. I— I was worried.” A cute hue of pink decorated her cheeks while she curled a tendril of her hair around a finger and looked away.

Ah, back to normal. Well, as normal as this place can be.

“How do you feel?” asked Cannoli.

“Head hurts. Leg hurts. I feel like I ran a mile. I guess that’s par for the course, though.”

They exchanged confused looks. “Par for what...?” they asked in unison.

“Par for the course. Like a golf course. You ever play golf?”

They shook their heads.

“What’s golf?” Cannoli asked.

“Right then,” I sighed.

“You seem upset. Did you have a bad dream?” Keke asked.

Keke’s question brought back the unsettling memory of the bowling-ball-turned-spider. I looked her dead in the eyes. She fidgeted and bobbed side to side on the balls of her feet. No, she certainly was not a spider. Thank God.

“Yes.” I admitted, then murmured, “I hope I never actually see your head roll.”

“What was that?”

“Nothing, Keke.”

“If you say so.” She shook her head. “You had us really worried.”

“We stayed in here all night,” said Cannoli quietly. She clasped her hands against her chest with her head bowed as if reciting a prayer. “Please don’t push yourself too hard. This island is a dangerous place if you’re not careful. Many of us lose our lives every day to give us the quality of life that we enjoy.”

“I’m sorry, really. I should have listened.” I reached at a few of the red strands of my dyed hairstreak and rolled them between my index and thumb fingers. “Guess I got carried away.”

“Yeah, you did,” said Keke.

There was a moment of silence between us. I wasn’t sure what to say next except that I was sorry. Oh, right. I’d said that already.

“Why don’t we have some breakfast?” Cannoli asked, sparing me the trouble of coming up with the right thing to say.

My stomach rumbled in agreement. “Yeah. That sounds great.” I crawled from the bed and threw on my t-shirt before following them into the kitchen.

Keke and Cannoli set to work taking ingredients from the cabinets and a cold box that I assumed functioned as a refrigerator.

“You can sit down, and I’ll cook. It’s my kitchen after all,” Keke said.

Cannoli pouted. “But you always say you like my cooking better. Let me help.”

Keke’s eyes narrowed. “No, really. I insist.”

While they bickered and worked on cooking breakfast, I summoned the iPaw and sifted through the notifications.

Matt has gained: 5 XP!

“Just five?” I breathed. Leiana’s warning of the difficulty level echoed in my ears. Jesus Christ.

Matt has gained: 1 Level of Valor!

Keke has gained: 5 XP!

Cannoli has gained: 5XP!

And then the quest window reappeared for [Roast the Roaches]. Nothing else. No other stats, no other increases, no actual level-ups. I’d played plenty of “grindy” games before, MMOs especially. The ones where you’d throw on an album or a show in the background and kill the same monsters over and over until your experience bar ticked up by one percent. But this was ridiculous. That goddamn roach had nearly killed me.

“Oh. I almost forgot,” Keke said as the smell of simmering veggies wafted around the room. She stepped toward the table, and Cannoli snatched the pan’s handle with a greedy smile.

“Hmm?” I looked up from the iPaw.

“This is your cut.” Keke pulled a coin purse from the side pocket of her dress and sifted through it, mouthing a silent count. After a moment, she set ten thumbprint-sized golden coins in front of me.

“What are these?” I picked one up and examined it. They had the same shape and cut as the cat bells dangling from their chokers.

“They’re the Bells from the roach parts I sold this morning. You can spend them on things in town.” Keke cocked her head. “You’re not from anywhere around here, are you?”

“No,” I admitted.

“Then where did you come from?” Cannoli asked as she cracked an egg over the pan.

“It’s… kind of a long story.” Would I be breaking the rules by telling them that I was reborn here? Did that go against Leiana’s aforementioned stipulations? “Somewhere really far away.”

Cannoli’s tail swished back and forth excitedly. “Wow. I’ve never even been to Nyarlothep before. I’ve lived here all my life.”

“We should go, then,” I said, hoping to change the subject.

Keke shook her head. “We can’t until we’ve reached tenth level. Honestly, it’s a miracle I found you in the water alive. You were really far out there. Further than you should’ve been.”

“Why?” At this rate, it was going to take years before we hit tenth level. I would die before I had a chance to visit Nyarlothep.

“Because of the Defiled in the middle of the ocean,” Cannoli supplied. “They— Well, they’d eat us for breakfast.”

“I take it the Defiled are tougher than the Encroachers?”

“A lot tougher,” Keke said. She took plates and silverware from a cabinet, setting them on the table before Cannoli divided the impromptu scramble between them. “Most of us live out our lives on this island. But many have died trying to leave.”

“Well, we’re going to get there.” I shoveled a forkful of scrambled eggs into my mouth. I was surprised by how delicious it was and felt my energy returning. “I promise.”