To his credit, Grub recovered quickly from death. He gasped as the Dark Lord appeared before us in full smoldering plate, and pulled up his Slave core and began to stab at it with a sausagy finger.

It took me a moment to understand what he was doing, but then I grabbed my friend by the arm and tried to talk some sense into him. “No Grub, I just brought you back, don’t you fucking die on me again!”

He was turning on his leveling system again, and all that accumulated experience was funneling into a series of level-ups. Since Grub still just had a Slave Core he wouldn’t be getting much by leveling, but there were still the attribute points to think about. And sure enough, Grub’s muscles were bulking up before my eyes, and he was growing a little taller. “Get off, Bitchard,” he growled. “Grub wait years for this.”

“This is suicide, at my expense!” I shouted, my efforts ever more feeble as Grub continually strengthened.

“Grub’s life to waste!” And then he shook me off, and scooped up my pick, and charged at the Dark Lord with an ogrey bellow of rage. The sand kicked up at his feet, and the werewolves were too shocked to do anything.

Grub reached the Dark Lord, coming up a full foot shorter, and smashed the sharp pick’s tip with all his might into his enemy’s helmet.

The tool shattered in Grub’s hand, and the Dark Lord’s own mailled fist came swiftly across in retaliation. He pimp-slapped Grub with a resounding crack, sending my friend sailing across the clearing to land head-first against a sand pile.

“Grub!” I shouted for what seemed like the hundredth time that night, and ran to the ogre’s side. A bar had appeared above his head.

Unconscious. Bleeding. Death in 100 seconds.

I was pissed, of course. I had just spent a godly boon that could have gotten me a whole harem of tsunderes or a magic sword or something, and had given in nobly and heroically for my buddy, and he’d basically spit on that gift within ten seconds. I grabbed Grub by the neck, hoisting his bleeding head up. His skull lolled on a broken neck, but I didn’t really care. “Oi, who’s the bitch now? Seriously, Grub, he’s gotta be level five hundred or something. Did you really think you were going to do anything to him?”

I was, of course, flipping through my cleric spells in my Hero Core menu at the same time. I didn’t have a ton of options at level one. I got to choose three “orisons” from a list of twelve, but decided I’d choose those later when I wasn’t trying to wrestle a retarded ogre back from the brink of death for the second time in one hour. I also got two first-level cleric spells from a list of twenty-five. I grabbed the classic “Cure Light Wounds,” and immediately understood how to use it. I just needed to touch Grub (check) and say something appropriately healy. “Git gud,” I said, and a white aura briefly surrounded him. Bones snapped back into place, and Grub stabilized. He wouldn’t be climbing any mountains any time soon (or, hopefully, fighting any Dark Lords) but he’d live.

That done, I turned back to the approaching Dark Lord, who I probably should have been paying a little more attention to. The slavemaster werewolf was groveling at the Dark Lord’s back, wringing his clawed hands and talking really fast. “I used the Message item right away, I swear, all this just happened right away, right after he Classed, I don’t know anything about it, gracious Dark Lord please have mercy on a poor stupid slave like me—”

“Shut up,” the Dark Lord said. He squatted down near Grub and I, and I resisted the urge to back away. I felt exhilarated, full of life, like nothing could stop me. I hadn’t done anything wrong. I’d just used the item the Dark Lord had given me. There was nothing to be afraid of.

I was pissing myself out of excitement, not debilitating fear. That’s my story and you can’t convince me otherwise.

“So, goblin.” The Dark Lord flicked Grub’s forehead as the ogre struggled to get back to his feet, knocking him out cold. I muttered a silent prayer of thanks. “I see you finally Classed. Took you long enough. You do realize you were more powerful than almost every human slave here, right? I figured it’d be a matter of days before you started killing everyone and taking their experience for yourself.” His helm turned slowly as he faced me. “You could even say I was counting on it. ‘Haha,’ I thought to myself, ‘someone who was dragged along when I summoned the most evil human of that world must be a devious and sinister person indeed.’ Was I mistaken?” He patted Grub on the head, his black and red armor clanking as he did so. I was terrified that he would just grab onto Grub’s head and rip it off, but he never did. “This fucking idiot. Little worm. Did he tell you why I let him live?”

“No,” I choked out.

“This worm used to be a guard in this very prison. Was next in line to become slavemaster. He led a rebellion with some of the other ogre guards. I killed them all in an… extremely painful manner. This one, I let live. As an example. And a cruelty.” The Dark Lord laughed, and it was the most horrible thing I’d ever heard. My hair didn’t just stand on end, it nearly tried to crawl out of my skin to escape. “The older ones, the ringleaders, they begged me to let the young ones go. They did what they were told, had bright futures, didn’t know what they were doing. Et cetera.” His voice became soft, but though I didn’t want to hear them, their shapes hissed perfectly into my ears. “I gored them with their own blades, from youngest to oldest, until only this worm remained. Leader of the pack, as it were. I promised him I would never kill him, not with my own two hands. In fact, I would see to it he lived as long as possible with the burden of what he did.”

That’s so eeeevil! I wanted to shout, but it would have been a little redundant. “Sooooooooo what you’re saying is, you’re not going to kick my teeth in for healing him right after you took the time to bitch slap him across the canyon?” I asked hopefully.

He stood. “Well. That brings me back to my initial thread of thought, goblin. See, I was hoping for some sign of savagery, of malice, of Evil. Instead, I see—well, one might call it a Good action.”

There was a melodramatic gasp from one of the werewolf guards, and the slavemaster smacked him in the head.

I coughed. “Hey, even the most evil people need allies and minions, right?”

“Minion?” From the Dark Lord’s tone, I could tell he was raising an eyebrow. “He calls you Bitchard, I understand.”

“Just a little game we play,” I said quickly. “But still, there’s nothing necessarily Good about helping your mates, mate. I’d be an idiot if I just went around kicking puppies and taking candy from babies. I gotta make people like me if they want to follow all the evil things I’m gonna tell them to do!” I gave him as meaningful a look as a four-and-a-half-foot goblin can give a towering Dark Lord in high-tier plate armor. “I imagine, my Dark Lord, you started out in much the same way.”

There was a tense moment as I stared down the master of all evil, armed with nothing but my bare hands, someone so pathetic the Dark Lord could kill me a million times and probably never level up. He could crush me without a second thought.

Blessedly, miraculously, ohthankyouJesusly, he began laughing instead, a much nicer one than before. “Well said, goblin.” He snapped his mailled fingers, somehow, and Grub’s Slave Core appeared and then shattered. In its place, a slightly brighter core appeared, one I guessed to be a basic Monstrous Core. “Your… minion… is hereby released from his bondage. As are you. Go off and do some stupid shit. I’ll be checking in periodically.”

I let out a sigh of relief, and slumped down on the sand beside the still-unconscious Grub. Then I remembered something. “Mr. Dark Lord, err, what happened to Sasha?” Visions of green titties danced in my head.

“Oh, she’s been doing great. In the… what’s it been, six weeks? Two months? Whatever. In that time, she’s burned six villages, enslaved a race of sentient spiders, and raped a grizzy owlbear to death. She’s got levels in Rogue now. She uses two greatswords, Bitchard! Two fucking greatswords! How cool is that?”

“That’s, uh, pretty sweet.” I was suddenly glad I hadn’t gone with Sasha after all. “I hope you don’t expect me to get up to all that… stuff… right away.”

“No, of course not. You’ll need to level a bit first. Probably clear a couple dungeons or something for equipment.” He raised a finger. “Ah, that reminds me. You’re a cleric. You could probably use this.” The Dark Lord pulled a black mace seemingly out of nowhere, tossing it to me. I yelped and grabbed at it with both hands, thankfully catching it before it landed on my foot or something.

“Th-thank you, Dark Lord.” I examined it. The mace was forged out of a slick black metal with red enamel inlay. Dark red cord was wrapped around the haft and tied in a loop on the end, probably so I could put it on my belt. “I’ll, uh, kill lots of stuff with it.”

“That’s the spirit.” The black and red lightning began to crackle around him, and his form began to fade. “Oh, by the way. Which god did you choose to serve?”

Tension filled the air, though I didn’t really know why. “Oh, just the first one that would take me,” I said as bored a tone as I could muster. “You guys have a weird pantheon. Nothing I recognized.”

“Hmmmm.” He fixed me with a glare for a moment, and then disappeared.

Grub and I departed in the morning.

E N D O F P A R T O N E